Диспозиционные факторы отношения к статистике у студентов, изучающих социальные науки: Настойчивость и академическая мотивация

Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics. 2014. Vol. 11. No. 3. P. 37–54.

Khavenson T., Orel E.

The paper describes the results of examining the relationship between attitudes towards statistics and academic motivation and persistence in sociology students. Often, in the everyday understanding social sciences are identified with the humanities and therefore are considered as not requiring specific mathematical training. Such attitudes in the social sciences students can lead to a decrease in the learning effectiveness and academic issues up to expulsion. To measure the attitudes towards statistics we used SATS-34 that covers a wide range of attitudes to both the academic subject and the statistics in general. The results showed that based on the combination of various aspects of the attitude the students can be divided into three types: interested in mastering statistics, formally interested and uninterested in the subject. The groups differ in the level of perseverance and the prevailing academic motivation. In addition, significant differences between groups were found in the expected and actual grades in the course. The article concludes that the attitudes towards statistics are related to both psychological characteristics of students and to the level of course mastery. The differences between the groups were significant notwithstanding the hard and regular monitoring and the high importance of the course in the curriculum, i.e. the hardness of control does not negate the contribution of psychological factors in the learning effectiveness. We assume that the differences between the groups would have been even more pronounced in a more relaxed learning environment.

Keywords: statistics anxiety, SATS, отношение к статистике, настойчивость, attitudes towards statistics, SATS-34, SATS-34, grit scale, academic motivation, академическая мотивация, тревожность по отношению к статистике