Some correct strategies are better than others: Individual differences in strategy evaluations are related to strategy adoption

Abstract

Why do people shift their strategies for solving problems? Past work has focused on the roles of contextual and individual factors in explaining whether people adopt new strategies when they are exposed to them. In this study, we examined a factor not considered in prior work: peoples’ evaluations of the strategies themselves. We presented undergraduate participants (N = 252) with two strategies for solving algebraic word problems and asked them to rate both of these novel strategies and their own strategy on a variety of dimensions. Participants’ ratings loaded onto two factors, which we label quality and difficulty. Participants’ initial evaluations of the quality of the strategies predicted whether they used the strategies at posttest. This effect held over and above individual- and contextual-level factors. However, people’s evaluations of the difficulty of the strategies did not predict later adoption. We also examined what predicted differences in strategy ratings and found that individual difference factors, including need for cognition and visuo-spatial ability, influenced people’s evaluations of the strategies. Additionally, contextual factors, such as the wording of the story problem, influenced which strategies they used. The findings highlight that strategy adoption depends on multiple interacting factors, and they suggest that examining characteristics of strategies is critical in order to understand strategy change.