Developing a Student Survey of Motivational Attitudes Toward Statistics

• Activity Number: 348 - Investigations into the Teaching and Learning of Statistics
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2018 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Alana Unfried* and Sarah Coffin and April Kerby
• Companies: California State University, Monterey Bay and California State University, Monterey Bay and Winona State University
• Keywords: statistics education; attitudes; undergraduate students; survey instrument; psychometrics; expectancy-value theory

Abstract

Attitudes toward statistics play an important role in a student's statistics achievement and retention (Kerby & Wroughton, 2017; Ramirez, Schau, & Emmioglu, 2012). In an ASA-approved report, Connecting Research to Practice in a Culture of Assessment for Introductory College-level Statistics, authors cite the need for improved metrics by which to measure such attitudes (Pearl et al., 2012). In response, in 2016 the Research on Statistics Attitudes workgroup began development of new instruments to measure attitudes toward statistics. This paper discusses the resulting pilot Student Survey of Motivational Attitudes toward Statistics (S-SOMAS). This includes the theoretical framework for the surveys, based on Expectancy-Value Theory (Eccles et al., 1983; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002), as well as the item development, subject-matter-expert review, pilot data collection, and exploratory factor analysis results. Initial result indicate that students take a more simplified view of the structure of motivational attitudes toward statistics, in comparison to the theoretical model.