STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARD Statistics ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES: A MIXED-METHODS APPROACH

James D. Griffith

Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

jdgrif@ship.edu

Lea T. Adams

Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

ltadam@ship.edu

LUCY l. gU

Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

lg3282@ship.edu

CHRISTIAN l. hART

Texas Woman's University

chart2@twu.edu

PENNEY NICHOLS-WHITEHEAD

Grand Valley State University

nicholpe@gvsu.edu

ABSTRACT

Students' attitudes toward statistics were investigated using a mixed-methods approach including a discovery-oriented qualitative methodology among 684 undergraduate students across business, criminal justice, and psychology majors where at least one course in statistics was required. Students were asked about their attitudes toward statistics and the reasons for their attitudes. Five categories resulted for those with positive and negative attitudes and were separated on the basis of discipline. Approximately 63% of students indicated a positive attitude toward statistics. Business majors were most positive and were more likely to believe statistics would be used in their future career. Multiple methodological approaches have now provided data on the various domains of attitudes toward statistics and those implications are discussed.

Keywords: Statistics education research; Statistics attitudes; Fear of statistics

__________________________

Statistics Education Research Journal, 11(2), 45-56, http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/serj

(c) International Association for Statistical Education (IASE/ISI), November, 2012

REFERENCES

Aiken, L. R. (1970). Attitudes toward mathematics. Review of Educational Research, 40(4), 551-596.

Aiken, L. R. (1976). Update on attitudes and other affective variables in learning mathematics. Review of Educational Research, 46(2), 293-311.

Aiken, L. R., & Dreger, R. M. (1961). The effect of attitudes on performance in mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 52(1), 19-24.

Atkinson, J. W. (1957). Motivational determinants of risk-taking behaviors. Psychological Review, 64(6), 359-372.

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Blalock, H. M. (1987). Some general goals in teaching statistics. Teaching Sociology, 15(2), 164-172.

Coetzee, S, & van der Merwe, P. (2010). Industrial psychology students' attitudes toward statistics. South African Journal of Industrial Psychology, 36(1), 1-8.

Derry, S. J., Levin, J. R., Osana, H. P., Jones, M. S., & Peterson, M. (2000). Fostering students' statistical and scientific thinking: Lessons learned from an innovative college course. American Educational Research Journal, 37(3), 747-773.

Dunn, D. S. (2000). Letter exchanges on statistics and research methods: Writing, responding, and learning. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 128-130.

Elmore, P. B., & Vasu, E. S. (1980). Relationships between selected variables and statistics achievement: Building a theoretical model. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72(4), 457-467.

Elmore, P. B., & Vasu, E. S. (1986). A model of statistics achievement using spatial ability, feminist attitudes and mathematics-related variables as predictors. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 46(1), 215-222.

Feinberg, L. B., & Halperin, S. (1978). Affective and cognitive correlates of course performance in introductory statistics. Journal of Experimental Education, 46(4), 11-18.

Gal, I., Ginsburg, L., & Schau, C. (1997). Monitoring attitudes and beliefs in statistics education. In I. Gal & J. B. Garfield (Eds.), The assessment challenge in statistics education (pp. 37-51). Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Garfield, J., & Ben-Zvi, D. (2007). How students learn statistics revisited: A current review of research on teaching and learning statistics. International Statistical Review, 75(3), 372-396.

Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1989). Fourth generation evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Harlow, L. L., Burkholder, G. J., & Morrow, J. A. (2002). Evaluating attitudes, skill, and performance in a learning-enhanced quantitative methods course: A structural modeling approach. Structural Equation Modeling, 9, 413-430.

Hill, C. E., Thompson, B. J., & Williams, E. N. (1997). A guide to conducting consensual qualitative research. The Counseling Psychologist, 25(4), 517-572.

Hilton, S. C., Schau, C., & Olsen, J. A. (2004). Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics: Factor structure invariance by gender and by administration time. Structural Equation Modeling, 11(1), 92-109.

Laher, S., Israel, N., & Pitman, M. (2007). Teaching research and statistics at undergraduate level: The RDA tutorial programme. South African Journal of Psychology, 37(2), 368-374.

Maehr, M. (1984). Meaning and motivation: Toward a theory of personal investment. In R. Ames & C. Ames (Eds.), Research on motivation in education, Vol. 1: Student motivation (pp. 115-144). Orlando, FL: Academic.

Mij, A. (2009). Differences in university students' attitudes and anxiety about statistics. Psychological Reports, 104(3), 737-744.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, M. A. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Mills, J. D. (2004). Students' attitudes toward statistics: Implications for the future. College Student Journal, 38(3), 349-361.

Morrow, S. L., & Smith, M. L. (2000). Qualitative research for counseling psychology. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology (3rd ed., pp. 199-230). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Mulhern, G., & Wylie, J. (2004). Changing levels of numeracy and other core mathematical skills among psychology undergraduates between 1992 and 2002. British Journal of Psychology, 95(3), 355-370.

Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2000). Attitude toward statistics assessments. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 25(4), 321-339.

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Seaman, M. A. (1995). The effect of time constraints and statistics text anxiety on test performance in a statistics course. Journal of Experimental Education, 63, 115-124.

Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Ridgway, J., Nicholson, J., & McCusker, S. (2007). Teaching statistics - Despite its applications. Teaching Statistics, 29(2), 44-48.

Roberts, D. M., & Bilderback, E. W. (1980). Reliability and validity of a statistics attitude survey. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 40(1), 235-238.

Schau, C. (1992). Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS-28).

[Online: http://evaluationandstatistics.com/ ]

Schau, C. (2003). Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS-36).

[Online: http://evaluationandstatistics.com/ ]

Schau, C., Stevens, J., Dauphinee, T. L., & Del Vecchio, A. (1995). The development and validation of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55(5), 868-875.

Schram, C. M. (1996). A meta-analysis of gender differences in applied statistics achievement. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 21(1), 55-70.

Schutz, P. A., Drogosz, L. M., White, V. E., & Distefano, C. (1998). Prior knowledge, attitude, and strategy use in an introduction to statistics course. Learning and Individual Differences, 10(4), 291-308.

[Online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1041-6080%2899%2980124-1 ]

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications.

Tempelaar, D. T., Van Der Loeff, S. S., & Gijselaers, W. H. (2007). A structural equation model analyzing the relationship of students' attitudes toward statistics, prior reasoning abilities, and course performance. Statistics Education Research Journal, 6(2), 78-102.

[Online: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/serj/SERJ6%282%29_Tempelaar.pdf ]

Vidich, A., & Lyman, S. (1994). Qualitative methods: Their research history in sociology and anthropology. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.) Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 23 - 59). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Waters, L. K., Martelli, T. A., Zakrajsek, T., & Popovich, P. M. (1988). Attitudes toward statistics: An evaluation of multiple measures. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 48(2), 513-516.

Waters, L. K., Martelli, T. A., Zakrajsek, T., & Popovich, P. M. (1989). Measuring attitudes toward statistics in an introductory course on statistics. Psychological Reports, 64(1), 113-114.

Weiner, B. (1979). A theory of motivation for some classroom experiences. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71(1), 3-25.

Wise, S. L. (1985). The development and validation of a scale measuring attitudes toward statistics. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 45(2), 401-405.

James D. Griffith

1857 Old Main Drive

Department of Psychology

Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

Shippensburg, PA 17257