The population of students used in this study also may have contributed to the

higher mortality rate. The University of Florida is a leading research institution in the

United States with high admission standards for undergraduate students. Accordingly,

students attending the University of Florida have higher levels of academic skills and are

expected to exhibit those skills. These high expectations may have pressured students

into answering most KAI items as easy or very easy to complete a task which may not be

accurate. In doing this, a student does not report their preferred cognitive style, but a

mixture of both cognitive style and cognitive level (Kirton). This is also known as the

halo effect, which is characterized by a respondent answering items in a way that

promotes the respondent as better than his or her realistic self (Ary, Jacobs & Razavieh,

2002). All KAI scores that were found to be suspect of not accurately determining

cognitive style were removed from the data (Kirton, 1999).

 The efficiency construct of the KAI had a post-hoc Cronbach's alpha of .66 in

determining its reliability. Yet, the efficiency construct was found as the most prominent

cognitive style construct gap in explaining stress and motivation. The literature has found

the KAI as a reliable and valid instrument (Kirton, 1999), but use of the KAI may have

limitations with college students considering the high mortality rate and low reliability of

the efficiency construct. The researcher calls for more development of the KAI for the

purpose of studying undergraduate students. This development should include qualitative

research to fully understand the relationship of variables in the undergraduate classroom.

 Another limitation of this study was low participant response in some classes.

Non-response error limited the findings of this study as not every student in these classes

completed all four instruments. Although 72% of all participants responded overall, there