Residents' formal knowledge acquisition and preferred learning styles.

Background: Many family practice residency programs use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in their educational programs. Our purpose was to study the relationship between learning style, as determined by MBTI personality preferences, and residents' cognitive knowledge acquisition, measured by in-service training examination (ISTE) scores during the first and third years of residency.

Methods: We evaluated 36 residents using both their first- and third-year ISTE composite scores and their MBTI scores. ISTE scores were analyzed according to the MBTI personality factors. We used the Wilcoxon Rank-Sum Test to determine the association between the improvement in residents' ISTE scores between the first- and third-year examinations and preferred learning styles.

Results: Significant differences were found on the composite ISTE scores for the thinking/feeling and judgment/perception scales. Feelers increased ISTE scores more than thinkers (P = .031); judgers increased ISTE scores more than perceivers (P = .04).

Conclusions: Results do not support the literature or current MBTI learning theory. Intuitive residents demonstrated no advantage over sensing residents. Residents using feeling/judgment as their preferred learning style acquired more knowledge over 3 years than their thinking/perceiving counterparts, as measured by ISTE scores.