168ANALYSING LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCES AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF A PRIVATE MEDICAL COLLEGE IN SOUTH INDIA.The subject of the present study is to find out preferred learning style of South Indian medical students using VARK questionnaire and to compare learning style preferences of non-clinical and clinical medical students. This descriptive-cross sectional study was conducted in a private medical college of south India. A total of 371 (n=371) students, belonging to different years of M.B.B.S degree were participated in this study. Version 7.8 of the VARK questionnaire form measures four perceptual learning preferences viz. Visual (V), Auditory (A), Reading (R) and Kinaesthetic (K). The VARK questionnaire form (Version 7.8) had 16 questions with four options for each question. Students were distributed the forms and requested to tick the appropriate answer for each question. They were also instructed to choose multiple options if they prefer multimodal learning styles. The VARK questionnaire forms were collected and subjected for statistical analysis. Learning style preferences are expressed as percentages of students in each category. Student ‘t’test was used to compare learning style preferences among clinical and non-clinical medical students. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS- 17(Statistical Package for Social Sciences). The study included 222(59.8%) female medical students and 149 (40.2%) male medical students from all the phases of undergraduate medical course. A total of 349 (94.1%) medical students preferred quadri modal learning method, whereas remaining 22 (5.9%) preferred tri-modal learning method. Among the tri-modal learning modes, 2.9% of students preferred AKV (Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Visual) followed by 2.7 % to AKR (Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Reading) and remaining 0.3% to KVR (Kinaesthetic, Visual, Reading). Most of the students in the present study were multimodal learners. No difference in learning style was found between clinical and non-clinical students. As most of the students have different learning styles, the teachers have to use combination of teaching strategies in medical education.dradake82@gmail.comReview712017Learning styles,Multi-modal learners,Medical educationPrabhakar Adake,Nagapati Prabhakar Bhat, Mahalaxmi S Petimani,Aparna AjjanagaddeAssistant Professor of Pharmacology, Yenepoya Medical College, Yenepoya University, Mangalore-575018, Karnataka, India,Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Yenepoya Medical College, Yenepoya University, Mangalore-575018, Karnataka, India,Assistant Professor of Biochemistry,Yenepoya Medical College, Yenepoya University, Mangalore-575018, Karnataka, India,Final year medical student, Yenepoya Medical College, Yenepoya University, Mangalore-575018, Karnataka, India.