Examining the Factor Structure of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics among Undergraduate Health Science Students

Abraham Ayebo; Jered Bright; Christian Ballam

doi:10.29333/iejme/5942

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Abraham Ayebo ¹ ^* , Jered Bright ¹, Christian Ballam ¹

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¹ University of Minnesota Rochester, USA^* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Recent studies report that students’ attitudes toward statistics play an important role in their statistics achievement. The goal of this study was to test the psychometric properties of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics (SATS-28) among undergraduate health science students enrolled in an introductory statistics course. Most students held positive attitudes towards statistics. The average SATS scores were above neutral. Confirmatory factor analysis validated the four-factor structure of the questionnaire (Affect, Cognitive Competence, Value, and Difficulty), albeit with a few modifications. The RMSEA value of 0.065 was below the suggested cutoff of 0.07. Cronbach’s alpha for the entire scale was .907, which was well above the recommended cutoff value of 0.7. The study provided evidence for the appropriate metric properties of the SATS-28 as a valid instrument for measuring the statistics attitudes of a sample of first year students at the University of Minnesota Rochester.

Keywords

student attitudes
statistics education
introductory statistics

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INT ELECT J MATH ED, Volume 15, Issue 1, January 2020, Article No: em0560

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/5942

Publication date: 27 Sep 2019

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How to cite this article

APA

Ayebo, A., Bright, J., & Ballam, C. (2020). Examining the Factor Structure of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics among Undergraduate Health Science Students. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 15(1), em0560. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/5942

Vancouver

Ayebo A, Bright J, Ballam C. Examining the Factor Structure of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics among Undergraduate Health Science Students. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2020;15(1):em0560. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/5942

AMA

Ayebo A, Bright J, Ballam C. Examining the Factor Structure of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics among Undergraduate Health Science Students. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2020;15(1), em0560. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/5942

Chicago

Ayebo, Abraham, Jered Bright, and Christian Ballam. "Examining the Factor Structure of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics among Undergraduate Health Science Students". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education 2020 15 no. 1 (2020): em0560. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/5942

Harvard

Ayebo, A., Bright, J., and Ballam, C. (2020). Examining the Factor Structure of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics among Undergraduate Health Science Students. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 15(1), em0560. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/5942

MLA

Ayebo, Abraham et al. "Examining the Factor Structure of the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics among Undergraduate Health Science Students". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, vol. 15, no. 1, 2020, em0560. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/5942