Investigation of Item Trends of Statistical Attitude Scale for Students Studying in Different Disciplines

Abstract

In this study, the 17-item Likert-type Statistical Attitude Scale (SAS) was used to measure the attitudes of university students towards statistics courses. This scale was applied to 218 science students, 100 health sciences students and 135 social sciences students in various departments taking a statistics course. By applying ridit analysis to the obtained data, the tendency differences and togetherness of the scale items belonging to the sub-dimensions of the Statistical Attitude Scale were revealed in different disciplines. The ridit values were calculated for the ordinal scale variables in the statistical attitude scale. As a result of these calculations, the classes were compared and the classes in which the students tend according to the items in the scale were determined. Ridit intervals of 8 of the 17 items in the scale were not significant. Therefore, cases are evenly distributed to these 8 items. Five of the other 9 items were found to have ridit intervals less than 0.5 and items concentrated in sub-classes (disagreement) for these five items. The ridit ranges of the remaining 4 items were greater than 0.5 cases showed a tendency for these four items, in the upper classes (agreement).

Keywords

• Likert,Statistical attitude scale,Ridit Analysis,Student,Different disciplines

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