Griffith University, Mount Gravatt, Queensland, Australia.
Br J Educ Psychol. 2024 Dec;94(4):1208-1223. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12714. Epub 2024 Sep 12.
Students often harbour negative attitudes towards research methods and statistics courses, and such attitudes may be associated with harmful cognitive and behavioural responses. Research on these effects has been restricted to the investigation of direct links between attitudes towards statistics, statistics anxiety, academic procrastination, and course performance.
This study sought to examine the interconnected impact of attitudes towards statistics, statistics anxiety, and procrastination, on course performance in a cohesive model. It was predicted that attitudes towards statistics would indirectly affect statistical performance via statistics anxiety and procrastination in a sequential manner.
The sample comprised 171 undergraduate psychology students from Australian universities.
An online questionnaire collected information on participant demographics, attitudes towards statistics, statistics anxiety, procrastinatory behaviours, and performance in participants most recently completed statistics course. Data were collected cross-sectionally. All responses were anonymous.
A sequential mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect effect of statistics anxiety and procrastination, controlling for age and gender. The results showed that more negative attitudes towards statistics are associated with greater statistics anxiety, which is in turn associated with greater procrastination, and finally with lower statistical performance.
It was concluded that students who view their statistics courses as a threatening experience may fail to see value in their statistical education, which is associated with heightened statistics anxiety, increased avoidance of course-related activities, and in turn poorer course performance. Practical implications of the findings are also discussed.
学生通常对研究方法和统计学课程持有负面态度，而这种态度可能与有害的认知和行为反应有关。这些影响的研究仅限于调查对统计学态度、统计学焦虑、学术拖延和课程表现之间的直接联系。
本研究旨在通过一个连贯的模型，考察对统计学的态度、统计学焦虑和拖延之间相互关联的影响对课程表现的影响。预测对统计学的态度会通过统计学焦虑和拖延以连续的方式对统计表现产生间接影响。
样本由来自澳大利亚大学的 171 名心理学专业本科生组成。
在线问卷调查收集了参与者人口统计学信息、对统计学的态度、统计学焦虑、拖延行为以及最近完成的统计学课程的表现信息。数据是通过横断面研究收集的。所有的回答都是匿名的。
顺序中介分析显示，统计学焦虑和拖延的显著间接影响，控制了年龄和性别。结果表明，对统计学课程的态度越消极，统计学焦虑程度越高，进而拖延程度越高，最终统计学表现越差。
研究得出的结论是，将统计学课程视为威胁性体验的学生可能会对他们的统计学教育失去价值，这与统计学焦虑加剧、对课程相关活动的逃避增加以及课程表现不佳有关。研究结果还讨论了实际意义。
