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Construction and validation of Chinese scale measuring statistics anxiety of university students = 建立和驗證華人大學生的統計焦慮量表
Principal Investigator
Department
Grant Awarding Body
Research Grants Council
Grant Type
Faculty Development Scheme
Project Code
UGC/FDS15/H06/17
Amount Awarded
$651,230
Funding Year
2018-01-01
2017/18
Duration of the Project
24 months
Status
Completed
Abstract
Statistics is a core course in the majority of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes (with the exception of those in the humanities), as well as a prerequisite for many courses involving research methods and data analysis. Therefore, students who lack a solid background in mathematics and statistics are likely to encounter significant obstacles. Students often feel apprehensive about statistics examinations. Many students who excel in other areas exhibit poor performance in statistics examinations, reducing their overall grade point average (GPA) and adversely affecting their learning progress and prospects.
Current measures of statistics anxiety (e.g., the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale [Cruise & Wilkins, 1980], the Statistics Anxiety Scale [Pretorius & Norman, 1992] and the Statistics Anxiety Inventory [Zeidner, 1991]) are limited by a tendency to overemphasise general attitudes towards statistics without adequately considering the anxiety-related symptoms triggered by statistics. In addition, these measures tend to neglect respondents’ sense of personal control over events and belief in fate and luck (often collectively categorised under the psychological construct of illusion of control; Langer, 1978), which are common within Chinese populations.
The proposed study will aim to construct and validate a measure of statistics anxiety that is appropriate for use with Chinese university students. The first stage will involve generating item banks from the qualitative findings of interviews with statistics educators and university students. The second stage will involve item analysis and modification. In the third stage, criterion validity will be established for measures of statistics anxiety, illusion of control and various anxiety disorders. The fourth stage will involve confirmatory factor analysis to verify the structure of the scale.
The findings of the proposed study will be immensely helpful for statistics educators, university students and counsellors seeking to resolve the problem of statistics anxiety. In addition, the scale generated from the study will have considerable potential for use in future research on statistics anxiety in local populations.
Current measures of statistics anxiety (e.g., the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale [Cruise & Wilkins, 1980], the Statistics Anxiety Scale [Pretorius & Norman, 1992] and the Statistics Anxiety Inventory [Zeidner, 1991]) are limited by a tendency to overemphasise general attitudes towards statistics without adequately considering the anxiety-related symptoms triggered by statistics. In addition, these measures tend to neglect respondents’ sense of personal control over events and belief in fate and luck (often collectively categorised under the psychological construct of illusion of control; Langer, 1978), which are common within Chinese populations.
The proposed study will aim to construct and validate a measure of statistics anxiety that is appropriate for use with Chinese university students. The first stage will involve generating item banks from the qualitative findings of interviews with statistics educators and university students. The second stage will involve item analysis and modification. In the third stage, criterion validity will be established for measures of statistics anxiety, illusion of control and various anxiety disorders. The fourth stage will involve confirmatory factor analysis to verify the structure of the scale.
The findings of the proposed study will be immensely helpful for statistics educators, university students and counsellors seeking to resolve the problem of statistics anxiety. In addition, the scale generated from the study will have considerable potential for use in future research on statistics anxiety in local populations.