348 – Investigations into the Teaching and Learning of Statistics
Developing a Student Survey of Motivational Attitudes Toward Statistics
Alana Unfried
California State University Monterey Bay
April Kerby
Winona State University
Sarah Coffin
California State University Monterey Bay
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.