Factors Related to Undergraduate Psychology Majors Learning Statistics

Abstract

Factors Related to Undergraduate Psychology Majors Learning Statistics Tamarah Faye Smith Doctor of Philosophy: Educational Psychology Major Advisor: Dr. Frank Farley The American Psychological Association (APA) has outlined goals for psychology undergraduates. These goals are aimed at several objectives including the need to build skills for interpreting and conducting psychological research (APA, 2007). These skills allow psychologists to conduct research that is covered in the media (Farley et al. 2009) and influences policy and law (Fischer, Stein & Heikkinen, 2009; Steinberg, Cauffman, Woolard, Graham & Banich, 2009a; Steinberg, Cauffman, Woolard, Graham & Banich, 2009b). One of the fundamental courses required for building these skills is statistics, a course that begins at the undergraduate level. Research has suggested that performance after completing statistics courses is weak for many students (Garfield, 2003; Hirsch & O'Donnell, 2001; Konold et al. 1993; Mulhern & Wylie, 2005; Schau & Mattern, 1997). The current study examined factors that may be related to performance on a statistical test. A sample of 231 students enrolled in or having already completed a statistics course for psychology majors completed a statistical skill questionnaire, built by the author, to measure performance with four APA outlined goals. To measure student attitudes the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS-36; Schau, 2003) was completed with adapted questions to measure perceived attitudes of peers and faculty toward statistics. Finally, questions pertaining to classroom techniques and content areas covered were assessed. Building off of social cognitive theory (SCT; Bandura, 1986) and expectancy-value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002), it was expected that lower attitudes, such as low value and low interest, among the students and those perceived to be held by faculty and peers would be related to lower performance on the statistical test. A series of linear regressions were conducted and revealed no significant relationship between perceived faculty attitudes and performance. Students' own liking and positive affect ratings were positive predictors of performance indicating a gain of 3-4% on the statistical test. However, an interesting negative relationship emerged with respect to students' value of statistics and peer interest scores where performance on the statistical test decreased as value and peer interest increased. This may be demonstrating issues pertaining to the SATS-36 validity when measuring students' value as well as issues with the items created to measure perceived peer interest. The results of a factor analysis on perceived attitude measures for peers and faculty suggest that the need for more items is necessary, particularly for faculty attitudes. Finally, this study provides a first look at the performance of a sample of psychology students with APA goals for quantitative reasoning. Results showed that students performed best at reading basic descriptive statistics (M=74.5%), and worst when choosing statistical tests for a given research hypothesis (M=30%). Performance on questions pertaining to confidence intervals (M=38%) and discriminating between statistical and practical significance (M=39%) was also low. Future research can address limitations of this study by expanding the sample to include a broader range of psychology undergraduates and including additional items for measuring perceived attitudes. Other methodological approaches, such as experimental design and directly measuring faculty attitudes, should also be considered. Finally, further research and replication are necessary to determine if scores on the statistical test will continue to be low with other samples and varying question formats. These results can then be used to generate conversation about why and how students are, or are not, learning the appropriate quantitative skills.