Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2001), 74, 675–681 Printed in Great Britain Ó 2001 The British Psychological Society Short research note Understanding learning strategies in the workplace: A factor analytic investigation David Holman* and Olga Epitropaki University of SheYeld, UK Sue Fernie London School of Economics, UK The aim of this study was to validate a scale of learning strategies, as derived from the educational literature, in an organizational context. Participants were 628 call centre employees. Both exploratory and conrmatory factor analyses suggested that a six-factor structure most accurately represented the learning strategies examined. Specically, three cognitive (extrinsic work reection, intrinsic work reection, reproduction) and three behavioural strategies (interpersonal help seeking, help seeking from written material, practical application) were found. Learning strategies can be dened as the practices that people use to aid the acquisition and development of knowledge in any one context (Kardash & Amlund, 1991). 1 In an organizational context, such practices are clearly relevant to a number of important areas, including training the transfer of training, innovation and performance management. Based on a review of the literature, Warr and Allen (1998) proposed that the following cognitive and behavioural learning strategies can be discerned. Cognitive strategies include: Reproduction/rehearsal, i.e. an intention to reproduce information without reection on its meaning and the repetition of information being learned; Organization, identifying key issues, creating schemas and grouping elements learnt; and, Elaboration, examining the implications of new information and aiming to understand new information in the light of existing knowledge. Behavioural strategies include: Interpersonal help seeking, obtaining assistance from others; Seeking help from written material; and, Practical application, increasing knowledge by trying things out in practice. In an empirical study to examine the factor structure of the six strategies outlined above, *Requests for reprints should be addressed to David Holman, University of SheYeld, SheYeld S10 2TN, UK (e-mail: d.holman@sheYeld.ac.uk). 1 Learning strategies are generally considered to diVer from learning styles. Learning styles are thought to be more generic and consistent ways of processing information and to be less aVected by contextual variation. However, the distinction between styles and strategies is not always clear cut (Warr & Downing, 2000) and it may be that learning strategies are the contextualized expression of higher-order learning styles. 675