Helping Undergraduates to Contribute to an Evidence Based World

Abstract

In recent times many authors have advocated change to the way statistics is taught to specialist and non-specialist undergraduates. One argument has been that adopting an approach that reflects real world experiences would better equip them for joining an evidence-based world after graduating. Even though some progress has been made, steps to change things have not been taken by curriculum designers or the vast majority of teachers of undergraduate statistics courses. More recently, in 2006 in the UK there were urgent calls from the Higher Education Funding Councils and the Economics and Social Science Research Council for proposals to develop undergraduate curricula to address the needs of today’s evidence based world. We describe an approach to teaching statistics to students in the key discipline area of the social sciences using an evidence-based problem-solving approach. Examples of materials that can be used to support this approach are also presented.