Effects of age differences on Statistics Anxiety and attitude among undergraduate students
Noura Faili
University of South Australia
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Abstract
Statistical anxiety is proving to be a menace in an educational setting especially for students
pursuing a statistics-related course. It is exacerbated when students in non-statistical degree
programs like sociology and humanities. The age of students has shown disparities in the group
of students where older students have been shown to have greater anxiety than the younger
students.
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Effects of age differences on Statistics Anxiety and attitude among undergraduate
Apprehension to statistical data is by no means a rarity, as it falls under what psychology
refers to as “statistics anxiety.” As bizarre as the term may seem, its reference to a person’s
discomfort over dealing with anything about statistics attaches with it a cause of concern relating
to the ability to present and interpret valuable data. However, according to Onwuegbuzie &
Wilson (2003), about 80% of social and behavioural sciences students still experiences statistics
anxiety. Thus, this negatively affects the student’s academic performance, including his/her
psychological and physiological conditions (Zehra Ali & Iqbal, 2012). In this sense, the focus of
this study is the group of students in non-statistical courses like sociology and humanities. The
participants will be categorized into traditional and non-traditional students based on their age
differences.
The importance of learning more about statistics anxiety relies on the essence of
expanding statistics literacy, which is highly important in a democratic setting, where everyone’s
input impacts the course of action (Chew & Dillon, 2014), considering the field’s instrumental
contribution to the social sciences. Following fkee & Sulaiman (2014), statistical anxiety can be
viewed as an obstacle to the student’s learning. Moreover, it is also found out that there is a
significant relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and the age of student that highly
promotes statistical anxiety (Legum et al., 2013; Williams, 2015). In the light of age
demographics, according to Legum et al. (2013), there is a statistical significance between age
and the levels of statistics anxiety where older students have shown greater statistical anxiety as
opposed to the younger ones.Also student’s attitude towards statistics course may influence
his/her performance. According to Sese’ (2015), attitude shows a strong direct analyst of
performance and plays a great mediating role within the student’s academic performance.
Students who have negative attitudes and unfavourable attitudes may contribute anxiety and low
efficiency towards statistics (Dr. Eduljee & LeBourdais, 2015).
However, in a positive view, statistics anxiety is also a necessary provocation to help
students to achieve optimal performance ((Dykerman, 2011); (Chei-Chang, Yu-Min, & Li-Tze,
2014); Macher et al., 2012).
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
The following hypotheses were constructed in the light of the above review:
There is a significant association between age demographics and statistics anxiety
Statistics anxiety heavily influences a student’s attitude towards statistical courses.
Many have come to appreciate the importance of literacy in statistics. This has resulted in an
increasing number of statistical courses in various degree programs. According to Amanda
(2010), close to 80% of the graduates, exhibit statistics anxiety especially in the fields of social
and behavioral sciences. As a result, students usually procrastinate their statistics courses
because of such fear (Chew & Dillon, 2015). Chew and Dillon (2014) asserts that empirical data
provides evidence that those students who are in non-mathematical degree programs claim that
statistics and related courses are the ‘most anxiety-inducing courses’ (Chew & Dillon, 2015). As
the literature asserts, students in the non-statistical courses are more or less fearful of statistical
courses infused in their degree programs (Chew & Dillon, 2015). This paper seeks to investigate
the association between age and statistical anxiety in relation to the consequential development
of attitude towards statistical courses.
Anxiety refers to worry and fear that an individual develops in anticipation of a threat even
though the outcome is uncertain. In this sense, the individual exhibits fear and worry but is
unable to point out the source of the anxiety (Jordan, McGladdery & Dyer, 2014). Regardless, he
or she expects something harmful and even painful. The outcome of such behavior results in
individuals avoiding likely sources of the anguish (Brown & Tallon, 2015). According to
Amanda (2010), anxiety also includes the perception of our inability to control future events and
that they might be related to several different events. As a result of the lack of control over the
future events, anxiety might occur because people worry that things might happen and cause pain
or stress (Bui & Alearo, 2011). Anxiety in the academics has been acknowledged extensively
and has been asserted to take several forms including mathematics and statistics anxiety.
According to Amanda Williams (2013), statistics anxiety has been considered to be “a multi-
dimensional construct.” The six components of statistics anxiety include “worth of statistics,
interpretation, test, class anxiety, computation self-concept, and the fear of asking help”
(Williams, 2013). The aspect of interpretation anxiety refers to the fear and worry developed
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
when students are faced with the task of interpreting the statistical results. Those with high
scores on this aspect find statistics to be very provoking (Dykerman, 2011).
Several researchers have correlated it with age differences where they assert that older students
exhibit more fear and worry when it comes to mathematical and statistical courses (Morsanyi et
al., 2016). A study by Ngoc and (2011) involving 104 participants discovered that older students
depicted the highest levels of anxiety as opposed to the younger ones. However, what stands out
clear is that statistics anxiety depicted a direct correlation with age (Devaney, 2010). In other
words, the traditional students are more anxious when compared to the non-traditional ones.
Methodology
The literature review pointed out that the two groups of students who are to be studied were the
traditional and non-traditional students. Following their definition, the traditional students are
those who studied mathematics or statistically related courses at the 11th year or below. The non-
traditional students, on the other hand, are those who studied after the 11th year which includes
the 12th year and university level. The desired sample size was 100 students but downsizing was
solely for convenience purposes. A total of 50 students, 26 males and 24 females were involved
in the data collection process of this study. Their ages varied from 18 years to 30 years. This is
because students older than 30 were present in the university environs but most of them are not
undergraduates.
This study involves assessing students to measure their levels of anxiety concerning taking
statistical courses. During the data collection process, students were approached randomly
regardless of their degree program.
The data was collected via a questionnaire which contains only one open-ended questions.
Firstly, the student is to provide a general comment about the course expectations followed by an
anxiety scale trying to score their level of anxiety when it comes to the course (Welch et al.,
2015). The Likert scale is next component used to measure the attitudes of students followed by
the demographic information.
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Results
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative
Percent
Valid
26 and below 30 60.0 61.2 61.2
Above 26 19 38.0 38.8 100.0
Total 49 98.0 100.0
Missing Missing Values 1 2.0
Total 50 100.0
Table 1: Descriptive statistics for the age variable
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative
Percent
Valid
Year 11 and Below 14 28.0 28.0 28.0
Year 12 and Above 36 72.0 72.0 100.0
Total 50 100.0 100.0
Table 2: The level of mathematics education
CommentAttitude N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean
The Approximate attitude of
each student towards
statistics.
Positive 34 31.0588 3.77344 .64714
Negative 16 22.1875 .83417 .20854
Table 3: Group statistics for the independent t test for the student attitude variable.
Levene’s Test for Equality of Variances
F Sig.
The Approximate attitude of each
student towards statistics.
Equal variances assumed 66.509 .000
Equal variances not assumed
Table 5: The independent t test values for the attitude variable
CommentAnxiety N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean
The Approximate levels of
anxiety for each student.
High Anx 11 36.64 1.567 .472
Low Anxi 37 28.70 3.527 .580
Table 6: Group statistics for the independent t test for the level of anxiety
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Levene’s Test for Equality of Variances
F Sig.
The Approximate levels of
anxiety for each student.
Equal variances assumed 4.692 .036
Equal variances not assumed
Table 7: The independent t test for the anxiety variable
CommentAnxiety Total
High Anx Low Anxi
The Students’ age. 26 and below 7 23 30
Above 26 5 14 19
Total 12 37 49
Table 8: A crosstab showing the comparison of the students’ age and levels of anxiety
CommentAttitude Total
Negative Positive
The Students’ age. 26 and below 7 23 30
Above 26 9 10 19
Total 16 33 49
Table 9: A crosstab showing the comparison of the students’ age and attitude
CommentAttitude Total
Negative Positive
The Students’ age. 26 and below 7 23 30
Above 26 9 10 19
Total 16 33 49
Table 10: A crosstab showing the students’ level of math education and their attitudes
CommentAnxiety Total
High Anx Low Anxi
The highest level of Math
studied.
Year 11 and Below 3 11 14
Year 12 4 11 15
University 6 15 21
Total 13 37 50
Table 11: A crosstab showing the students’ level of math education and their level of anxiety
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Discussion
Following the study, the age variable was categorized into two groups, those aged 26 years and
below, and those above 26 years. The former group refers to the non-traditional students whereas
the latter comprised of the traditional ones. 60% of the sample was above 26 years whereas the
remaining 40% were above 26 years. Also, 7 out of 30 students aged below 26 years depicted
high levels of anxiety while 5 out 19 students aged above 26 years exhibited anxiety. 23 of 30
students remaining aged below 26 years showed low stress levels and 14 of 19 students above 26
years were also not anxious. 7 out 30 students aged below 26 years portrayed a negative attitude
while the remaining 23 had a positive attitude. The non-traditional students were more fearful of
statistics than the traditional ones. This could be attributed to the fact that the older students had
learned about statistics in their recent past coupled with the fact that they also have higher levels
of mathematical education (González et al., 2016). For those over 26 years, 9 out of 19 students
had a negative attitude while the remaining 10 had a positive attitude. As such, more students
with a positive attitude exhibited low levels of anxiety while the few who had a negative attitude
had high levels of anxiety and stress.
Following the independent t-test, there were significant differences between the sample group
means considering that a significant value of 0.036 was achieved which is less than 0.05. There
were several groups obtained from the data extrapolated from the variables and they include high
levels of anxiety, low anxiety levels, positive and negative attitude. This statistical finding could
be explained by the fact that students with higher levels of anxiety developed a negative attitude
towards statistics and vice versa. This study is significant and can prove to be helpful in the
EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
development and implementation of interventions for students with statistics anxiety in a bid to
reduce the dislike for the nonmathematical courses taking statistics (Morsanyi et al., 2016).
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EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER DIFFERECES ON STATISTICS ANXIETY AND
ATTITUDE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
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