Learning from Text in Late Elementary Education. Comparing Think-aloud Protocols with Self-reports

Although measuring pre-adolescents’ text-learning strategy use with self-report inventories is most convenient for large-scale research, their use is accompanied with some concerns and their validity has been criticized. This study compares two different measurement methods (i.e., self-report and think aloud). More specifically, the relationship between subscale and item scores of the Text-Learning Strategies Inventory and the occurrence of the corresponding coded behavior in students’ think-aloud protocols is studied. Moderate to high correlations were found for the subscales reflecting overt and covert cognitive text-learning strategies. Uncovering the relation between metacognitive self-reported and observed strategy use was more difficult.