Exploring Statistics Anxiety in Several Introductory Statistics Courses to Understand Differences Between Types of Students and Types of Courses

Abstract

Despite its importance in modern curricula, many students find statistics courses challenging, and the existence of barriers among students to learning statistical reasoning is an important area of study. This study explores the presence and level of statistics anxiety in several cohorts of students studying introductory statistics. The relationship with statistical anxiety dependent on specialisms is explored, along with their curricular choices. An online questionnaire was developed to explore the effects of statistical anxiety and attitudes towards learning statistics. Comparisons were made both within and between the cohorts of students and showed that demographic factors and gender play a minor but statistically significant role in explaining levels of statistical anxiety, but that no significant differences in statistics anxiety existed between cohorts.

From Statistics Anxiety to SoTL: How a scholarly enquiry led to professional growth

“…Accordingly, it was of interest to explore how 'specialism' and 'compulsion' related to statistics anxiety. This is what Bock et al (2020) and Alexander et al (2022) explored and report on, and that original SoTL enquiry is the focus of our reflections here.…”

“…The project reported in Bock et al (2020) and Alexander et al (2022) identified several statistically significant results and several meaningful results. Statistically significant results included females enduring higher anxiety scores compared to males, and Chinese learners enduring lower anxiety rates compared to British and Irish learners.…”

“…Whilst other frameworks for supporting SoTL also exist, such as Felten's five principles of good practice in SoTL (Felten, 2013), Glassick's framework was chosen as the tool to explore SoTL partly due to its familiarity for all staff and partly for its final principle of 'reflective critique'. The main purpose of this article is to reflect on engagement of SoTL and so to evaluate this budding professoriate, this article adopts critical reflection on each element of Glassick's framework as an enquiry method (Brookfield, 2017) to critically reflect on the experiences of SoTL undertaken by the four authors of Bock et al (2020) and Alexander et al (2022).…”

“…The project reported in Bock et al (2020) and Alexander et al (2022) used a survey adapted from the statistics anxiety rating scale (STARS), initially developed by Cruise et al (1985). The adapted survey used only the first three subscales of STARS, as proposed by Chew and Dillon (2014), to measure students' anxiety about statistics.…”

“…Goals that are well articulated, defined, precise, and answerable but in addition goals that identify a gap in existing knowledge in the field. In this instance, the stated goals of the statistics anxiety project reported in Bock et al (2020) and Alexander et al (2022) were to explore the extent that statistics anxiety impacts on student learning when comparing specialist and non-specialist cohorts and voluntary or non-voluntary course requirements.…”