Paechter Manuela, Macher Daniel, Martskvishvili Khatuna, Wimmer Sigrid, Papousek Ilona
Educational Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of GrazGraz, Austria.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Tbilisi State UniversityTbilisi, Georgia.
Front Psychol. 2017 Jul 24;8:1196. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01196. eCollection 2017.
In many social science majors, e.g., psychology, students report high levels of statistics anxiety. However, these majors are often chosen by students who are less prone to mathematics and who might have experienced difficulties and unpleasant feelings in their mathematics courses at school. The present study investigates whether statistics anxiety is a genuine form of anxiety that impairs students' achievements or whether learners mainly transfer previous experiences in mathematics and their anxiety in mathematics to statistics. The relationship between mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety, their relationship to learning behaviors and to performance in a statistics examination were investigated in a sample of 225 undergraduate psychology students (164 women, 61 men). Data were recorded at three points in time: At the beginning of term students' mathematics anxiety, general proneness to anxiety, school grades, and demographic data were assessed; 2 weeks before the end of term, they completed questionnaires on statistics anxiety and their learning behaviors. At the end of term, examination scores were recorded. Mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety correlated highly but the comparison of different structural equation models showed that they had genuine and even antagonistic contributions to learning behaviors and performance in the examination. Surprisingly, mathematics anxiety was positively related to performance. It might be that students realized over the course of their first term that knowledge and skills in higher secondary education mathematics are not sufficient to be successful in statistics. Part of mathematics anxiety may then have strengthened positive extrinsic effort motivation by the intention to avoid failure and may have led to higher effort for the exam preparation. However, via statistics anxiety mathematics anxiety also had a negative contribution to performance. Statistics anxiety led to higher procrastination in the structural equation model and, therefore, contributed indirectly and negatively to performance. Furthermore, it had a direct negative impact on performance (probably via increased tension and worry in the exam). The results of the study speak for shared but also unique components of statistics anxiety and mathematics anxiety. They are also important for instruction and give recommendations to learners as well as to instructors.
在许多社会科学专业中，例如心理学，学生们表现出高度的统计焦虑。然而，选择这些专业的学生往往不太擅长数学，并且可能在学校的数学课程中经历过困难和不愉快的感受。本研究调查统计焦虑是一种真正会损害学生成绩的焦虑形式，还是学习者主要将以前在数学方面的经历及其数学焦虑转移到了统计学上。在225名本科心理学专业学生（164名女生，61名男生）的样本中，研究了数学焦虑与统计焦虑之间的关系，它们与学习行为以及统计考试成绩的关系。数据在三个时间点记录：学期开始时，评估学生的数学焦虑、一般焦虑倾向、学校成绩和人口统计学数据；学期结束前2周，他们完成关于统计焦虑和学习行为的问卷；学期结束时，记录考试成绩。数学焦虑和统计焦虑高度相关，但不同结构方程模型的比较表明，它们对学习行为和考试成绩有真实甚至相反的影响。令人惊讶的是，数学焦虑与成绩呈正相关。可能是学生在第一学期的过程中意识到高中数学的知识和技能不足以在统计学中取得成功。那么，部分数学焦虑可能通过避免失败的意图增强了积极的外在努力动机，并可能导致为考试准备付出更多努力。然而，通过统计焦虑，数学焦虑对成绩也有负面影响。在结构方程模型中，统计焦虑导致更高的拖延，因此对成绩有间接的负面影响。此外，它对成绩有直接的负面影响（可能是通过考试中增加的紧张和担忧）。研究结果表明统计焦虑和数学焦虑有共同但也独特的成分。它们对教学也很重要，并为学习者和教师提供了建议。
