A theory of reasoned action model of accounting students' learning processes and learning strategies

Fishbein and Ajzen's 1975 Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), updated by Ajzen and Fishbein in 1980, is advanced in this paper as an appropriate theory for measuring student's intentions to adopt deep or surface processing and to adopt specific learning strategies. TRA is a decision theory that explains motivation by emphasising the specific processes that individuals use to make choices. TRA captures an individual's motivation by using the concept of intention to perform a behaviour. A TRA model was constructed based on a four-latent-variable (deep, surface, strategic and intention) framework and empirically assessed for model data fit. The survey items showed loadings on the constructs of deep, surface and strategic processing under this framework, indicating strong construct validity for the three learning factors. The TRA model was found to strongly positively influence the adoption of the deep processing construct, and to strongly negatively influence the adoption of the surface processing construct. In addition, it was found to strongly positively influence the adoption of positive learning strategies and weakly discourage the use of negative learning strategies.