Measuring Statistics and Data Science Attitudes: A Modern Approach, and Why You Should Get Involved

• Activity Number: 284 - Assessment Tools in Statistics and Data Science Education
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 9, 2022 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and Data Science Education
• Author(s): Alana Unfried* and Douglas Whitaker and Marjorie Bond and Leyla Batakci and April Kerby-Helm and Michael Posner
• Companies: CSU Monterey Bay and Mount Saint Vincent University and Monmouth College and Elizabethtown College and Winona State University and Villanova University
• Keywords: statistics education; attitudes; surveys; undergraduate students; data science education; instructors

Abstract

Statistics educators have been studying undergraduate student attitudes toward statistics for decades, but with lack of modern instruments for collecting attitudes and a mechanism for studying these attitudes at the national scale. These two needs are met with our NSF-funded grant MASDER: Motivational Attitudes in Statistics and Data Science Education (DUE-2013392). Prior research tells us that attitudes matter in statistics and data science education, and it is crucial for educators to understand these attitudes. Through the grant, our research team is creating a family of validated instruments to measure student attitudes toward statistics or data science, instructor attitudes toward teaching statistics or data science, and the learning environment. We will describe the goals of the grant, the six instruments under development and the development process, and brief psychometric findings from our Spring 2022 survey administrations. We encourage statistics and data science instructors and educational researchers to get involved with data collection for Fall 2022.