As community health educators, nurses find it difficult toeffectively implement teaching and learning strategiestraditionally used with American adult learners. Concurrentmethodological triangulation was used to explore the construct offield dependence/independence in immigrant adult learners. Thistwo-step study employed the Witkin (1971) Group Embedded FiguresTest (GEFT) to determine field dependency/independency in 77subjects from various culturally diverse populations. Theconvenience sample consisted of 16 (n=16) subjects from Russian,Sudanese, and Dominican adult learner cohorts. These subjectsproved to be predominantly field-dependent. Focused interviews alsoprovided direct self-reported evidence that the students perceptionof their learning process was consistent with the results of theGEFT. Outcomes of this study suggested that focused interviewtechniques reflected field dependency/independency as accurately asa formal assessment tool, such as the GEFT. Results indicated theassessment of cohort-based learning style tendencies through anon-threatening interview may be a cost effective and timeefficient way to plan community-based educational programs.