Attitudes toward Using and Teaching Confidence Intervals: A Latent Profile Analysis on Elementary Statistics Instructors

Abstract

The use of confidence intervals (CIs) for making a statistical inference is gaining popularity in research communities. To evaluate college statistics instructors’ readiness to teach CIs, this study explores their attitudes toward teaching CIs in elementary statistics courses, and toward using CIs in inferential statistics. Data were collected with a survey that classifies instructors’ attitudes on the basis of three previously established pedagogical components: affective, cognitive, and behavioral. Based on the survey responses from 270 participants, we created three profiles (subgroups) via latent profile analysis, and identified each profile’s pattern of attitudes toward CIs and common characteristics of the instructors that fit each profile. In addition, we compared the profiles across groupings created by six variables: gender, academic background, statistics teaching experience, subject preference, degree level, and desire to improve teaching. The results of the latent profile analysis support three profiles within the population of statistics instructors, and the results of the comparative analysis of teacher characteristics indicate that the six variables are moderate to strong predictors of the grouping of the sample into three profiles.

An Integrative Model for the Study of Attitudes Towards Statistics, Part 1: Establishing the Conceptual Model

“…On the other hand, Kim et al (2019) published an article on attitudes toward the use and teaching of confidence intervals. They sought to analyze the profiles of primary university statistics teachers.…”

An Investigation of Academic Motivation and Career Decidedness among University Students

“…This will also make it easier to achieve their goals. Motivation is a stimulus that encourages and energizes people to do certain activities and has physiological, cognitive and affective dimensions (Abu Karsh, 2018;Akinbadewa & Sofowora, 2020;Al-Husban, 2020;Basarmak & Hamutoglu, 2020;Benek & Akcay, 2019;Dweck, 1986;Hamid, Salleh, & Laxman, 2020;Kim et al, 2019;Rogayan Jr, 2019;Suren & Kandemir, 2020;Turunen, 2019). It is seen that making students have positive affective characteristics in today"s school settings can eliminate almost 1 in 4 of the variance, which is the measure of the difference in learning levels (Sünbül, 2004;Yılmaz & Sünbül, 2002).…”