The Relationship between Preservice Teachers’ Attitudes towards Statistics and Their ResearchAnxiety

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship betweenpreservice teachers’ attitudes towards statistics and their research anxiety. Thepopulation of the study consisted of the students of a public university in Turkeywho were studying at the Guidance and Psychological Counseling, and thePreschool Education programs. From this population, 257 participants weresampled for thisresearch based on scale sampling method. In order to determinethe attitudes and the anxiety of the participants towards statistics and research,two separate scales were to the participants. The scale of attitudes towardsstatistics consisted of 33 items, which assessed five subscales. The scale ofresearch anxiety consisted of 12 items measuring a single factor. The data wereanalyzed through independent samples t-test and correlation analyses. Thestudy results suggested that the female preservice teachers had more positiveattitudes towards statistics than the male preservice teachers. On the other hand,the male preservice teachers’ research anxiety levels were lower than the femalepreservice teachers. Moreover, the attitudes and the anxiety levels showedsignificant differences based on the departments of the preservice teachers infavor of the Guidance and Psychological Counseling department. Finally, apositive correlation found between the research anxiety and the attitudestowards statistics levels of the participants.