Investigating the relationship between statistics anxiety and attitudes towards statistics in three countries

Statistical literacy is a pressing need in modern society, but statistical learning is often inhibited by anxiety towards statistics. This study examines how statistics anxiety is related to other dimensions of students’ attitudes towards statistics, how these interrelations predict statistics anxiety, and how these dimensions change following introductory statistics instruction. Using data from Spain, Canada, and Australia, this study finds that anxiety is negatively related to security-confidence and positively related to motivation, and that the structure of these relationships is consistent across countries as well as before and after statistics instruction. Further, this structure predicts how these dimensions change following statistics training: by the end of an introductory statistics course, students report higher security-confidence and pleasantness but lower anxiety. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for statistics instruction.