What determines the study strategies students select?

Students tend to make suboptimal study strategy decisions, representing a significant educational challenge that demands intervention. Understanding the drivers behind these choices is essential for developing interventions. Our thematic analysis of 27 undergraduate interviews reveals that perceived strategy effectiveness primarily drives strategy selection, with strategies adapted based on a complex interplay of factors, including confidence levels of the material, perceived difficulty of the material, general motivation, and procrastination. Numerous contextual factors were also determinants—perceptions of time constraints, assessment, test format and weight, curriculum, and learning environment. Mixed results were found for students’ awareness of a strategy’s time and effort, and perceptions of other students’ strategies. Grade goal, task value, and emotional states showed minimal impact. These findings illuminate a critical path forward: effective study strategy interventions should enhance students' metacognitive study strategy knowledge—what study strategies are effective, when to use them, and how to implement them— while simultaneously developing complementary self-regulated learning capabilities, such as management of motivation/affect, behaviour, and context. Future research should test the generalisability of these findings across diverse student populations, while also designing and evaluating targeted interventions that aim to enhance both metacognitive knowledge and complementary self-regulated learning capabilities.