Challenges Associated With Measuring Attitudes Using the Sats Family of Instruments

Abstract

The Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS) is a widely used family of instruments for measuring attitude constructs in statistics education. Since the development of the SATS instruments, there has been an evolution in the understanding of validity in the field of educational measurement emphasizing validation as an on-going process. While a 2012 review of statistics education attitude instruments noted that the SATS family had the most validity evidence, two types of challenges to the use of these instruments have emerged: challenges to the interpretations of scale scores and challenges using the SATS instruments in populations other than undergraduate students enrolled in introductory statistics courses. A synthesis of the literature and empirical results are used to document these challenges.

What Changes Students’ Attitudes? A Qualitative Panel Study on How and Why Attitudes Toward an Introductory Statistics Course Change

“…What several of these studies have in common is the finding of high rates of attitude change among students. However, these changes (partially) cancel each other out in the averaging across students because improvements and deteriorations occur in similar amounts (Abbiati et al, 2021;ICOTS11 (2022) Whitaker et al, 2022). From this, it can be concluded that not only do course-related factors have an influence on the development of attitudes, but also that there exist individual differences between students.…”

“…It has been known for some time that attitudes toward statistics at the beginning of a course have predictive value for course success (Chiesi & Primi, 2010;Nasser, 2004). However, more recent studies show that changes during the course are even more predictive of exam success (Abbiati et al, 2021;Whitaker et al, 2022).…”

“…In addition, the interest in the subject of statistics is surveyed as well as the amount of effort planned or already invested in the statistics course.Using this instrument, researchers have argued that students' attitudes towards statistics do have an effect on their success in statistics courses (e.g., Abbiati et al, 2021;Chiesi & Primi, 2010;Nasser, 2004). Research also suggests that changes in attitudes predict success even better than attitudes themselves (Abbiati et al, 2021;Whitaker et al, 2022). In addition to the instrument, SATS dimensions of attitudes became a fixed canon for further, also qualitative, research (e.g., Songsore & White, 2018).Despite these findings, little attention has been paid to changes in attitudes during a statistics course.…”

“…Using this instrument, researchers have argued that students' attitudes towards statistics do have an effect on their success in statistics courses (e.g., Abbiati et al, 2021;Chiesi & Primi, 2010;Nasser, 2004). Research also suggests that changes in attitudes predict success even better than attitudes themselves (Abbiati et al, 2021;Whitaker et al, 2022). In addition to the instrument, SATS dimensions of attitudes became a fixed canon for further, also qualitative, research (e.g., Songsore & White, 2018).…”

A Topic-Specific Evaluation of Students’ Attitudes Towards Statistics

“…It is, however, one thing to need to take courses in statistics and another thing to have the right attitude towards it. Students' attitude towards statistics is one of the major concerns in statistics education given the large number of articles in this regard (e.g., Ashaari et al, 2011;Cashin & Elmore, 2005;Gal et al, 1997;Garfield et al, 2002;Gundlach et al, 2015;Oliveira Júnior et al, 2018;Schau & Emmioglu, 2012;Schau et al, 1995;Whitaker et al, 2022), and the fact that different scales have been developed for this purpose. The most popular attitude scale has hitherto been the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS) scale by Schau et al (1995), with a later version in 2003.…”