Mental self-government: development of the additional democratic learning style scale using Rasch measurement models.

This paper describes the development and validation of a democratic learning style scale intended to fill a gap in Sternberg's theory of mental self-government and the associated learning style inventory (Sternberg, 1988, 1997). The scale was constructed as an 8-item scale with a 7-category response scale. The scale was developed following an adapted version of DeVellis' (2003) guidelines for scale development. The validity of the Democratic Learning Style Scale was assessed by items analysis using graphical loglinear Rasch models (Kreiner and Christensen, 2002, 2004, 2006) The item analysis confirmed that the full 8-item revised Democratic Learning Style Scale fitted a graphical loglinear Rasch model with no differential item functioning but weak to moderate uniform local dependence between two items. In addition, a reduced 6-item version of the scale fitted the pure Rasch model with a rating scale parameterization. The revised Democratic Learning Style Scale can therefore be regarded as a sound measurement scale meeting requirements of both construct validity and objectivity.