In every class group there are students whose results do not correspond to the time they devote to studying. The explanation is usually not aptitude but METHOD: how the study session is planned, organised and regulated. The CHEE-49 assesses precisely that — planning, time management, environment, technique, motivation, exam preparation and self-regulation — and returns it as objectives that tutorial work can act upon.
The CHEE-49 (Questionnaire of Study Habits and Strategies) is a self-report instrument of 49 statements answered on a five-point frequency scale, from Never to Always. It is not an examination and has no correct answers: it describes the study method of the student and returns that description in a form usable in tutorial work.
Fourteen of the 49 statements are worded in the opposite direction — "I start studying without knowing what I have to do" — and are scored in reverse. These are inverse items, a standard control for acquiescence: they prevent a respondent from marking the same column throughout and obtaining a favourable profile with no informative value.
The instrument is built into the platform and translated into nine languages. Administration and scoring are digital: there is nothing to print, nothing to score by hand and nothing to transcribe into a spreadsheet afterwards.
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The 49 statements are not an undifferentiated list: they form seven blocks of seven items each. The number is identical by design, so that every dimension carries the same weight in the overall index and the bars of the profile are directly comparable without any correction.
Deciding what to study, in what order and how far in advance: use of a diary or planner, spreading the syllabus over several days and estimating how long each task will take.
Regularity and actual use of study time: a stable routine, getting down to work without delay, planned breaks, weekly revision and resistance to procrastination.
The conditions of the place where the student works: a fixed, tidy space, materials prepared beforehand and control over distractions, digital ones above all.
How the student actually studies: surveying before reading, selecting what matters, reworking the content in their own words and checking what they remember without looking, as opposed to rereading and rote repetition, the techniques with the poorest demonstrated returns.
Why and how persistently the student studies: an orientation towards learning beyond passing, personal goals, persistence in the face of difficulty, confidence in their own effort and what they attribute their results to.
Preparing for and coping with tests: starting early, self-testing beforehand, knowing the format, managing time during the exam, checking answers before handing in and keeping anxiety in check.
The ability to steer one's own learning: noticing whether one is understanding, asking for help, checking the goals of each session, changing method when it is not working and learning from marked mistakes.
The items are not presented grouped by block: they are interleaved, one from each dimension in turn. Seven consecutive items on time management would induce a uniform response set for the whole block, which is precisely the response bias the design sets out to avoid.
The same 49 items are worded three times, for three age ranges. The structure is invariant — same dimensions, same numbering, same inverse items — so that the scores remain comparable across versions; only the wording is adapted, since a ten-year-old and a university student do not describe their study habits in the same terms.
Short sentences and school vocabulary ("homework", "topics"). Designed for years 4 to 6 of primary school; in year 4 it is best read aloud with the class. Below the age of 9 self-report loses reliability and is not worth administering.
The reference version, for secondary school and sixth form. It talks about subjects, syllabus and deadlines, and assumes students organise their study outside the classroom.
Higher-education register: independent study, terms, tutorials, reading lists and exam sittings. Designed for university and higher vocational studies.
The questionnaire is already drafted, piloted and translated: no item has to be written. From your account the procedure comprises four steps.
From the "Study habits" section of the menu, open "Study habits questionnaire generator" and choose the stage (primary, secondary or university): the platform generates the 49 items, already translated, and takes you to assign them. Each administration is an independent copy, so the questionnaire can be applied again later in the school year without overwriting the first measurement.
Assign it to one of your class groups from "Assign a study habits questionnaire to the whole group": the platform issues an access code for the group. A student who joins later can receive it from "Assign a study habits questionnaire to individual students", with their own code.
Students require no account, no email address and no password: they enter the code, select their name and respond to 49 statements on a five-point scale, from Never to Always. Administration takes 15 to 20 minutes and there are no correct or incorrect answers.
The report is computed from the responses as they arrive: the group profile, an individual profile for each student, the items with the lowest scores in the group and the list of students requiring attention. Nothing is queued and nothing is cached, so any adjustment to the scoring is reflected the next time the report is opened.
Every dimension yields an index from 0 to 100, and every index falls into one of four bands. The bands are CRITERIAL, not normative: they answer whether the habit is established or not, which is the question relevant to tutorial work, rather than where the student ranks relative to the class, which is a different question and of little use at the start of the school year.
The habit is not established. Refinements are of no use at this level: the routine has to be built from the beginning, with explicit guidance.
The habit appears intermittently, typically in the week before an assessment. It requires a specific plan and follow-up over several weeks.
The habit is established, with room for improvement in specific aspects. It calls for a concrete recommendation, not a full intervention.
Consolidated. This is the strength on which to build the rest: a student who plans well can transfer that same planning to the dimensions that are lagging behind.
For the GROUP: the mean profile of the seven dimensions, the distribution of students across levels in each dimension, the ten statements with the lowest scores in the group — in practice, the agenda for the next tutorial session — and the list of students requiring attention.
For each STUDENT: the profile of seven dimensions, the overall index, an interpretation of each dimension at the level reached, and specific recommendations for the dimensions that require them. No recommendation is issued for habits already consolidated: a report that comments on everything becomes an unreadable text.
A student is included in the attention list on any of three criteria, the second being the least obvious: an overall index below 40; three dimensions at the Initial level even when the overall index appears adequate; or a questionnaire so incomplete that no profile can be computed. The second criterion identifies the student whose average conceals a specific difficulty.
This is the report of one student from that group — fictitious, like everything else on this page. The overall index is 46, a value that triggers no alert on its own. What follows is what that average conceals.
Three of the seven dimensions are at the Initial level: no planning, no time management and no exam preparation. The remaining four are adequate, which is precisely why the overall index appears acceptable.
The report interprets each of those levels and issues specific recommendations for the dimensions that require them. The following is its output for this student, verbatim:
You sit down to study without having decided what you are going to do, so a good part of the time goes into getting started. It is not about willpower: with no plan, every session begins from scratch. Spending two minutes deciding what today looks like changes the rest of the afternoon.
Spend two minutes before you start writing down what you will do today and in what order. · Note every deadline and exam date in one single place, as soon as you are told. · Break long assignments into pieces with dates of their own: a paper due in three weeks is three tasks this week. · When planning, estimate how long each thing will take and add a margin: it almost always takes longer than expected.
Your study time is irregular and piles up at the last moment. Studying the day before forces you to memorise in a hurry what you had no time to understand, and that is gone as soon as the exam ends. A short daily routine pays off far more than one long night.
Pick a fixed time to study, even a short one, and keep it on the flat days too. · Work in blocks of 25-40 minutes with short breaks; the break is part of the method. · Before you start, leave your phone in another room: turning it face down is not enough. · Set aside a fixed slot each week to revise what you have already studied, not just to move on.
You already use some useful strategies, but they sit alongside rereading and rote memorising, which take time and fix very little. Replacing the third reading with an outline written without looking changes the outcome more than it seems.
After studying a section, close your notes and write down everything you remember; only then check what was missing. · Turn each topic into 5-8 questions and answer them days later. · Replace the third reading with an outline written without looking. · Explain the topic out loud to someone (or to the wall): where you get stuck is what you do not understand. · Save highlighting for a second reading, because on the first one you do not yet know what matters.
You prepare exams with very little margin and without checking beforehand what you know, so you reach the test with no reliable information about your own state. Starting three days earlier and asking yourself questions out loud changes the outcome more than extra hours the night before.
Start revising at least three days before; the eve should be for revising, not for learning. · Sit a mock exam against the clock. · Look at past papers to see how questions are asked. · In the test, read everything before starting and share out the time according to what each part is worth. · Always keep a few final minutes to check.
The report does not stop at the level of the dimensions: it identifies up to three specific statements, among those the student answered with the two lowest values of the scale. Those statements are what a tutorial session can act upon.
The student does not see any of this unless the tutor decides to go through it with them. The instrument is an aid to the tutorial interview, not a label to be issued.
Any self-report instrument can be completed without being read. Ignoring that fact is what renders these instruments useless in practice, so the report examines three validity indexes and issues a warning when one of them is triggered. No case is ever discarded silently.
The student picked almost the same option throughout, without distinguishing between questions. Read the profile with caution and, if possible, go over it with them.
The answers contradict each other across several pairs of opposite questions. The profile is still shown, but it may not reflect the student's actual behaviour.
The student answered too quickly to have read the questions. The results may not reflect how they really study.
Inconsistency is detected with five pairs of opposing statements: a respondent who claims both to plan every session AND to start without knowing what to do is not reading the items. Response time is measured between the first and the last answer and only its lower bound is used: a student who interrupts the questionnaire and resumes it the next day records an extremely long time, which carries no information.
When a warning advises repeating the questionnaire, the teacher can reset it for that student alone from "Study habits questionnaires results". In addition, the final screen warns the student of any statement left unanswered.
This is the design that gives the instrument its value. A single measurement describes a group; two measurements, with the tutorial intervention in between, establish whether that intervention has produced any change — evidence that few educational instruments are able to provide.
Each administration is an independent copy with its own items and its own responses, so applying the questionnaire again in May does not alter the October measurement: both are preserved, and they are compared by opening the report of each one. The illustration superimposes them so that the change can be seen at a glance.
In the example above, the overall index of the group moves from 56 to 68 and the number of students requiring attention falls from six to one. The dimensions with the largest gains are those that were worked on, which is consistent with the intervention: planning and time management can be taught within a few weeks, whereas motivation changes far more slowly. A valid instrument has to reflect that difference as well.
A study habits questionnaire elicits information about a minor that they may not have disclosed to anyone: that they cannot get started, that examinations paralyse them, that they give up as soon as the task becomes difficult. Students therefore respond with no account, no email address and no password; the surnames of minors are stored and displayed as initials only; personal data are encrypted field by field; and closing an account effectively deletes them.
Every profile and every chart on this page comes from a FICTITIOUS group, generated specifically for illustration with the same code that computes the real reports. No real student has ever appeared on a public page of this site, and none ever will.
The questionnaire is available in its three versions: generate the administration, assign it to a class group and interpret the report the same day. The user manual documents the whole procedure screen by screen.
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