Measuring Statistics Attitudes at the Student and Instructor Levels: A Multilevel Construct Validity Study of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics

Abstract

Numerous studies have been conducted using the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics-36 (SATS-36). Recently, large-scale assessment studies have begun to examine the extent to which students vary in their statistics attitudes across instructors. Yet, empirical evidence linking student responses to the SATS items to instructor-level constructs is still lacking. Using multilevel confirmatory factor analysis, we investigated the factor structure underlying the measure of students’ statistics attitudes at both the student and instructor levels. Results from 13,507 college students taught by 160 introductory statistics instructors support a correlated six-factor model at each level. Additionally, there is evidence for the structural validity of a shared teacher–student attitude impacts construct that may capture meaningful patterns of teaching characteristics and competencies tied to student development of statistics attitudes. These findings provide empirical support for the use of the SATS-36 in studying contextual variables in relation to statistics instructors. Implications for educational practice are discussed.

Assessing attitudes towards biostatistics education among medical students: Adaptation and preliminary evaluation of the Chinese version survey of attitudes towards statistics (SATS-36)

“…Many studies reported that the negative perceptions towards biostatistics may affect the willingness, persistence and course achievement for medical students [6-9], and consequently hinder students' ability for developing statistical thinking skills and for applying these skills in clinical practice [10]. Therefore, students' attitudes toward disciplines, as an important learning outcome, have received considerable attention in the education research literature with strong interest in both students' and their teachers' perspectives [11]. Attitude toward statistics is commonly described as a multidimensional concept, which consists of affective (emotions and the motivation related to the classes and examinations), cognitive (beliefs and knowledge about the ability requested to learn statistics and about the discipline) and behavior (action tendencies in studying and the performance in examinations) components [12].…”

“…At present, several inventories are used to assess attitudes towards statistics, such as the Statistics Attitude Scale [15], the Attitudes Toward Statistics(ATS) [16], the Survey of Attitude Toward Statistics(SATS) [17], and the Statistics Attitude Survey(SAS) [18]. Among them, the SATS-36 [19] and its predecessor SATS-28 [17] has been validated prudently and used the most widely to examine the psychometric properties across different populations, assess students' statistics attitudes in response to course interventions and explore the relationships between students' statistics attitudes and learning outcomes, and so on [11]. The SATS-28 [17] assesses four subscales (components) of attitude toward statistics: Affect (students' positive and negative feelings about statistics); Cognitive Competence (students' attitude about their intellectual knowledge and skills when applied to statistics); Value (attitude about the usefulness, relevance, and worth of statistics in personal and professional life); Di culty (students' attitude about the di culty of statistics as a subject).…”