Note-taking at college lectures is believed to provide an external memory device for review and to require the student to encode the learning material into a personally meaningful form. A closer examination of the kinds of notes made and used by students may help to explain the relationship between the note-taking process and individual differences. In order to determine the effect of using a preferred or nonpreferred lecture note method on multiple-choice and essay test scores and on post-lecture note preference, college students (N=99) were assigned to take their own notes or to use full or partial notes distributed to them while listening to a lecture. Results indicate that the kinds of notes used by students have a significant effect on achievement, and that achievement does not interact with study technique preference. In both multiple-choice and essay tests, students using full distributed notes did not score as well as students using their own or partial notes, suggesting the importance of personal encoding. Students initially preferring their own or full notes tended to prefer partial notes after the lecture. (Author/NRB)