Causal attributions and learning styles of university students

The purpose of the research is to find out the dimensions of the causal attributions to success and failure of university students, and to identify their learning styles. The research is a descriptive one and survey method was used. The study group consisted of 1. and 4. grade students of three faculties of Education, Engineering and Economics and Administrative Sciences in the academicyear of 2010-2011. The sample consisted of a sum of 300 people, 136 of whom are male, and 164 of whom female, chosen through the technique of stratified sampling. Causal Dimensions Scale II adapted from McAuley, Duncan, and Russell (1992) and Kolb Learning Style Inventory, which was translated into Turkish by Aşkar and Akkoyunlu (1993) were used as data collecting tools.To analyse the data, frequency, percentages, crosstabs, chi-square, mean, standard deviation, independent samples t test, and one-way ANOVA tests were carried out. As a result of the research, attributions to success were found out to be more internal, personally more controllable, stable, but externally less controllable. Attributions to failure are more external, externally more controllable but personally less controllable and stable than the ones to success. 43.7% of the sample have assimilating, 32% of the sample have convergent, 14% have divergent and 10,3% of the sample have accommodative learning styles. Distribution of learning styles shows no statistically significant difference in terms of the variables of faculty, grade level and gender.Keywords: Causal attributions, experiential learning, learning styles