The Relationship Between Verbal Reasoning Skills and Statistical Literacy in Undergraduate Students

• Activity Number: 487
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Elizabeth Johnson* and Diana Keosayian
• Companies: George Mason University and Wilkes University
• Keywords: statistical literacy ; verbal reasoning ; introductory course ; statistical anxiety

Abstract

The increasing need for statistically literate college graduates has made introductory statistics classes a requirement for most undergraduate college majors. This has led to reforms in the methods of teaching these classes (Cobb, 1992; GAISE Report 2005) with a new focus on statistical pedagogy. Research has revealed that statistical anxiety (SA) has not only been linked to the interpretation of data (Balaglu, 1999) but may be more closely related to verbal reasoning (VR) skills than to mathematical logic (Zerbolio, 1999). Although this connection has been made, minimal research has been directed toward how VR skills impact SA and statistical literacy skills among undergraduate students (Collins & Onwuegbuzie, 2002). The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between verbal reasoning skills, statistical anxiety, and statistical literacy in an introductory statistics course at three different US higher education institutions. Survey returns indicate that students with high VR skills have a greater appreciation for the usefulness of statistics than students with high mathematical skills, while high mathematical ability did not result in lower SA.