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member (McKeachie, Chism, Menges, Svinicke & Weinstein, 1994) and A-I theory

requires the interaction between student and faculty member in the problem solving

process (Kirton, 2003). Simply said, there may not have been enough interaction between

faculty members and students in some of these classes for the realization of cognitive

style gap.

 The student participants examined in this study were representative of college

students in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida,

however these college students may not be typical of the general population identified by

Kirton (2003). The University of Florida has high admission standards that not all

students are able to meet. The cognitive level (intelligence) of these students are higher,

allowing them to learn how to cope (operate in another cognitive style) as the situation

requires. It is possible that these students were able to recognize the faculty member's

expectations and meet those expectations with ease, more so than other individuals. Said

differently, student engagement in these classes could be better explained by cognitive

level instead of cognitive style (Kirton, 2003).

 Instrument measurement error may have also contributed to the limitations of this

study. In data analysis, only total scores of stress, motivation and engagement were used,

each with acceptable post-hoc reliability (Schmitt, 1996). However, the measure of stress

used in this study could be questioned. This study used a perceived stress instrument

which was limited in ability to measure stress specifically to academics. Measures of

perceived stress have been found to inadvertently measure chronic stress, or other sources

of stress (Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelsein, 1983). The researcher recommends that more

research be conducted to accurately measure undergraduate academic stress.