Attitudes and Beliefs Toward Statistics of Health Sciences Students

• Activity Number: 258
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 2, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Laura Pontiggia*+ and Carl Walasek
• Companies: University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
• Keywords: Education ; Attitude toward statistics ; Health Sciences students

Abstract

Researchers and statistics educators have been investigating attitudes toward statistics for many years. Many studies showed that students' attitudes might influence their ability to learn statistical concepts. As teachers we aim to give students a positive view of statistics and an appreciation for its potential uses in their future personal and professional areas. In this study we assess the attitude toward statistics of undergraduate students enrolled into a health sciences program (e.g. Pharmacy, Physical/Occupational Therapy, and Health Sciences) by using the pre- and post- version of the SATS-36©. We observed a change in the overall SATS-36 score and in the six attitudinal components scores, and we identified attitude patterns in different type of learners. Moreover, a relationship between course grade and both pre- and post-course attitude scores was found.