Bias in the Assessment of Regulation Activities in Studying at the Level of Higher Education

This article presents the results of a comparison between two questionnaires about regulation activities related to studying in higher education. The questionnaire developed within a different educational setting appears to be less discriminative and predictive than an equally developed local version. Due to cultural bias, the external regulation activities cause the main difference. Nevertheless, the factorial structure of the regulation activity scales seems to be invariant over different domains of study within the same educational setting. The bias in the assessment of regulation activities is significantly stronger in the group of students with the lower and medium level of general thinking skills. Furthermore, we found that a higher level of regulation skills can compensate for a lower level of general thinking skills. Evidence is discussed that the specificity of metacognitive skills about studying is domain-independent, but situation-bounded.