A factor analysis of students attitudes towards statistics in higher learning institution Malaysia

Rosnalini Mansor

Abstract

Attitudes toward statistics have received a great attention by academic and researcher in statistics and mathematics education. This paper investigates students’ attitudes towards statistics in one of the Malaysia higher education institution and determined the factors that explain the attitude of students toward statistics. Stratified sampling method was used to select 274 respondents from 18 classes Elementary Statistics course. The attitudes toward statistics were measured using the Survey Attitude Towards Statistics (SAT-36) scale. Factor analysis was applied to identify the factors on students’ attitude toward statistics. Findings from factor analysis revealed that seven factors that explain the attitude of the students were self-determination, cognitive competence, effort, value of statistics in professional life, difficulty, statistical solving and value of statistics in everyday life. The results suggested that statistics should be demonstrated in more practical way for developing more positive attitude towards statistics. This could further promote the learning process and students’ ability to apply the statistical concepts.

References

1. Bartlett JE, Kotrlik JW, Higgins CC. (2001). Organizational Research: Determining Appropriate Sample Size in Survey Research. Information Technology, Learning and Performance Journal, 19(1), 43-50. 2. Baloglu M. (2003). Individual differences in statistics anxiety among college students. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(5), 855-865. 3. Cashin SE, Elmore PB. (2005). The Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics Scale: A Construct Validity Study. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 65 (3), 509-524. 4. Ramirez C, Schau C, Emmioglu E. (2012). The importance of attitudes in statistics education. Statistics Education Research Journal, 11(2), 57-71. 5. Coetzee S, van der Merwe P. (2010). Industrial Psychology Students’ Attitudes Towards Statistics. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 236(1), 1-8. 6. Gal I, Ginsburg L, Schau C. (1997). Monitoring attitudes and beliefs in statistics education. Assessment Challenge in Statistics Education, 37-51. 7. García-Santillán A, Venegas-Martinez F, Escalera-Chávez ME. (2013). An Exploratory Factorial Analysis To Measure (Empirical Study in Undergraduate Students). International Journal of Research and Revise in Applied Sciences, 356-366. 8. Griffith JD, Adams LT, Gu LL, Hart CL, Nichols-Whitehead P. (2012). Students’ Attitudes Toward Statistics Across The Disciplines: A Mixed-Methods Approach. Statistics Education Research Journal, 11(2), 45-56. 9. Hilton SC, Schau C, Olsen J A. (2004). Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics: Factor Structure Invariance by Gender and by Administration Time. Structural Equation Model A Multidiscipline Journal, 11(1), 92-109. 10. Mahmud Z. A. (2009). Discriminant Analysis of Perceived Attitudes Toward Statistics and Profiles Identification of Statistics Learners 2 Related Studies on Attitudes Toward. In: the 2nd WSEAS International Conference on Multivariate Analysis and its Application in Science and Engineering, 41-47. 11. Oguan Jr FE, Halili LM, Dublin AC. (2013). Exploring Students’ Attitudes and Performance toward Statistics Across the Discipline: Does Attitude Affect Performance? International Journal of multidisciplinary Research Academy, 1(9), 33-62. 12. Schau C. (2003). Students’ Attitudes: The “Other” Important Outcome in Statistics Education. In: Joint Statistics Meetings. 13. Slootmaeckers K, Kerremans B, Adriaensen J.(2014). Too afraid to learn: Attitudes towards statistics as a barrier to learning statistics and to acquiring quantitative skills. Politics, 34(2), 191-200. 14. Sulieman H. (2015). Students’ Conceptions of Statistics: An Exploration of Attitudes across Majors. International Journal of Research Education, 3(2), 158.