The aim of this study was to investigate an adaptation of the Study Processes Questionnaire for the discipline of physics. A total of 2030 first year physics students at an Australian metropolitan university completed the questionnaire over three different year cohorts. The resultant data has been used to explore whether the adaptation of the questionnaire is justifiable and if meaningful interpretations can be drawn for teaching and learning in the discipline. In extracting scales for deep and surface approaches to learning, we have excised several items, retaining an adequate subset. Reflecting trends in literature, our deep scale is very reliable while the surface scale is not so reliable. Our results show that the behaviour of the mean scale scores for students in different streams in first year physics is in agreement with expectations. Furthermore, different year cohort performance on the scales reflects changes in senior high school syllabus. Our experiences in adaptation, validation and checking for reliability is of potential use for others engaged in contextualising the Study Processes Questionnaire, and adds value to the use of the questionnaire for improving student learning in specific discipline areas.