Current and Future Health Care Professionals' Attitudes Toward and Knowledge of Statistics: How Confidence Influences Learning

• Activity Number: 196
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Heibatollah Baghi*+ and Melanie L. Kornides
• Companies: George Mason University and Harvard School of Public Health
• Keywords: Attitudes towards Statistics, Healthcare Statistics

Abstract

Many decisions made by professionals in health care quality improvement require some understanding of statistics. Developing competency in statistical reasoning is necessary for students training in health care administration, research, and clinical care. Recently, interest in healthcare professional's attitudes toward statistics has increased substantially due to evidence that these attitudes can hinder understanding of statistical concepts. In this study, we analyzed pre- and post-instruction attitudes towards, and knowledge of statistics obtained from health science graduate students enrolled in an introductory graduate course in statistics (n = 212). We computed summary measures of student attitudes towards six statistical domains: research design, interpretation, application, computation, utility, and self-confidence.. Paired t-tests were used to evaluate differences between pre- and post-test scores. Results show that the majority students held generally positive attitudes toward statistics at the beginning of course. However, these attitudes-along with the students' statistical proficiency-significantly improved after 10 weeks of instruction.