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Counting better? An examination of the impact of quantitative method teaching on students’ statistical anxiety and confidence to complete statistical tasks.

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-03-06, 10:11 authored by Martyn Chamberlain, John HillierJohn Hillier, Paola Signoretta
This article reports the results of research concerned with students’ statistical anxiety and confidence to both complete and learn to complete statistical tasks. Data were collected at the beginning and end of a quantitative method statistics module. Students recognised the value of numeracy skills but felt they were not necessarily relevant for graduate employability and preferred to study with words rather than numbers. A significant reduction in anxiety and increase in confidence to complete statistical tasks were found. Students seemed to feel more confident about doing and learning less complex procedures. Results reinforce the need to provide students with additional mathematical and statistical support outside of quantitative method courses as well as that numeric learning materials and study tasks need to be embedded across the curriculum within substantive disciplinary modules. The design of numeric study tasks needs to be carefully considered to ease the transition for students from simple to more complex statistical procedures while simultaneously reinforcing the importance of numeracy skills for examining substantive disciplinary topics and promoting graduate employability.

Funding

Project activity was in part funded by an ESRC grant to examine the impact (if any) of QM teaching on UG social science students (ES/J011452/1).

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Published in

Active Learning in Higher Education

Volume

16

Issue

1

Pages

1 - 16

Citation

CHAMBERLAIN, J.M., HILLIER, J. and SIGNORETTA, P., 2015. Counting better? An examination of the impact of quantitative method teaching on students’ statistical anxiety and confidence to complete statistical tasks. Active Learning in Higher Education, 16 (1), pp. 51-66.

Publisher

SAGE Publications © The Author(s)

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This article was published in the journal, Active Learning in Higher Education [SAGE Publications © The Author(s)] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469787414558983

ISSN

1741-2625

Language

  • en