Do You Learn Deep or on the Surface?
What drives your studying, and what you actually do with the material
In the 1970s, Swedish researchers gave students an academic article to read and then asked them how they had read it. Some had tried to understand what the author was arguing; others had tried to remember whatever might be asked. That split - deep and surface approaches - became one of the most used ideas in university teaching. This test shows which way you lean, both in what drives you and in what you actually do.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Think of a course, exam or piece of work training you did recently. Answer about what you actually did, not what a good student is supposed to do.
What it measures
The four subscales of the revised Study Process Questionnaire: deep motive (studying because the subject interests you), deep strategy (looking for meaning and connections), surface motive (studying to get through at the lowest cost) and surface strategy (memorising what is likely to be tested). It is not the same as need for cognition or curiosity, which are general traits: an approach to study depends heavily on the course, the workload and the way you are assessed.
Based on: Revised Two-Factor Study Process Questionnaire, R-SPQ-2F (Biggs, Kember & Leung, 2001)
Possible results
Deep motive
Studying because the subject itself interests you.
Deep strategy
Looking for meaning, connections and real understanding while you study.
Surface motive
Studying mainly to pass, with the least effort or risk.
Surface strategy
Memorising what is likely to be tested, without necessarily understanding it.
Common questions
Is a surface approach always bad?
No. It is a poor way to understand a subject, but some tasks genuinely only need recall, and surface studying can be a rational response to an overloaded course. The problem is using it by default for material you will need later. In the original Swedish study, the surface readers remembered details but often missed what the article was actually arguing.
Can I change the way I study?
Yes, and more easily than a personality trait, because approaches respond to context. Assessment that asks you to explain and apply pushes towards deep approaches, while dense syllabuses and recall-based exams push the other way. On your side, testing yourself in your own words and linking each topic to the previous one are the habits that move the deep bars.
Is this the same as learning styles, like visual or auditory?
No. The idea that people learn better when teaching matches a visual or auditory style has very weak support. Deep and surface approaches are about the intention behind your studying - to understand or to reproduce - and what you do as a result. That difference has a long research record in higher education and relates to the quality of what students end up learning.
Sources
- Marton, F., & Säljö, R. (1976). On qualitative differences in learning: I - Outcome and process. British Journal of Educational Psychology. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.1976.tb02980.x
- Biggs, J., Kember, D., & Leung, D. Y. P. (2001). The revised two-factor Study Process Questionnaire: R-SPQ-2F. British Journal of Educational Psychology. doi:10.1348/000709901158433
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from the published R-SPQ-2F, so scores cannot be compared with its norms. The questionnaire was built for university students and assumes you are studying something now; answers from memory are less reliable. Approaches are not fixed traits - the same person can go deep in one course and stay on the surface in another. Studies in other countries have not always reproduced the four-subscale split cleanly, so read the bars mainly as two pairs.
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