Attitudes towards statistics and statistical performance: A mediation model of statistics anxiety and academic procrastination

Abstract

Background

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.

Aims

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.

Sample

The sample comprised 171 undergraduate psychology students from Australian universities.

Methods

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.

Results

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.

Conclusions

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.