This paper is from Session 5E: Statistics Education Across Discipline
which comes under Topic 5: Statistics education in the workplace, government and across disciplines
Paper 5E2 (Monday 9th, 11:00-12:30)
The role of mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety in learning statistics
Presenter
- Caterina Primi (University of Florence, Italy)
Co-author
- Francesca Chiesi (University of Florence, Italy)
Abstract
Several studies consider statistics anxiety as being conceptually different from mathematics anxiety. Of course, statistics uses basic mathematical concepts and calculations but its learning contents differ from mathematics in various aspects. The aim of the current work was to shed light on the relationship between mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety, and their relationship to performance in a statistics examination. The participants were psychology students enrolled in an undergraduate introductory statistics course. Results showed that mathematics anxiety is the best predictor of statistics anxiety that has a role as mediator among mathematics anxiety and performance. The results are important for learners as well as for instructors.