Comparisons of Math Anxiety Levels and Study Habits Among Hispanic Students

• Activity Number: 170
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2016 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Xiaohui Wang* and Cristina Villalobos and Olga Ramirez and Luis Fernandez
• Companies: The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and The University of Texas at Austin
• Keywords: mathematics anxiety ; study habits ; elementary statistics ; factor analysis ; Hispanic students

Abstract

A student's statistics or mathematics performance is affected by his/her mathematics anxiety and study habits. Meanwhile, study habits and mathematics anxiety have mutual affects. In this study, we developed a 57-item survey to measure student's study habit and used Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale Brief (MARS-B) to obtain math anxiety score. Data was obtained from 405 Hispanic undergraduate students in Spring 2015 at a Hispanic Serving Institute. In this study, we focused on comparisons of mathematics anxiety and study habit between different groups of Hispanic students. In addition to several demographic factors, the groups of the students were defined by course type, Elementary Statistics, College Algebra, Intermediate Algebra, or Elementary Algebra. One of our research hypotheses was that students taking statistics courses have higher mathematics anxiety level than those taking mathematics courses. Before using two sample t-test, ANOVA, and regression analysis for statistical inference, we employed factor analysis to explore underlined factors for the 30-item mathematics anxiety survey and 54-item study habit survey, respectively.