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Statistics Anxiety
Statistics anxiety is the feelings of anxiety encountered when taking a statistics course or doing statistical analyses; that is gathering, processing and interpreting data.[1]
Statistics anxiety has been found to have psychological negative effects on students’ statistical performance and achievement. Several factors that had already been identified to contribute to the level of statistics anxiety: mathematics background, instructor’s feedback, time frame of the courses, student’s gender, and time constraints during testing.
The most commonly used measure of statistics anxiety is the Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale, also known as STARS.
Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale[edit]
Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale, also known as STARS, is a Likert-type scale questionnaire consisting of 51 survey questions and scores statistics anxiety on six dimensions[1]:
- Worth of statistics
- Interpretation anxiety
- Fear of asking for help
- Test and class anxiety
- Computation self-concept
- Fear of statistics teachers
First three subscales measure level of statistics anxiety, and the other three subscales assess students’ attitudes toward statistics.[2] All responses were given on a five-point Likert scale, with anchors 1: Strong disagreement and 5: Strong agreement.
Effects of Statistics Anxiety[edit]
Statistics anxiety is known to have a negative relationship with students statistics achievement. Students who experience higher levels of statistics anxiety tend to have lower performance on a statistics examination.[1] Statistics anxiety causes a negative perception of statistics among the students with the increase in dropping out and procrastination in the pursuit of education.[3]
Despite numerous researches have shown negative relationship between statistics anxiety and statistics achievement, it has been suggested that mid-level anxiety corresponds to higher performance as mid-level anxiety impels students to study harder for examines. However, our current research on the effects of statistics anxiety is limited due to the lack of an efficient scoring tool for anxiety levels.[1]
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d Cruise, R. J., Cash, R. W., & Bolton, L. D. (1985) Development and validation of an instrument to measure statistical anxiety. Proceedings of the Section on Statistical Education, Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association. 92-98.
- ^ Chew, P. K. H., & Dillon, D. B. (2014). Statistics Anxiety Update: Refining the Construct and Recommendations for a New Research Agenda. Perspective on Psychological Science, 9(2), 196-208.
- ^ Lavasani, M.G., Weisani, M.,& Shariati, F. (2014). The role of Achievement Goals, Academic Motivation in Statistics Anxiety: Testing a causal model. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 114, 933-938.