Title: Statistics minus anxiety

Author: Kevin Ralston

Theme: Research-Informed Teaching

Statistics anxiety is an anxiety, or fear of statistics. It has been suggested to affect up to 80% of particular groups of students. It is also argued that students’ experience statistics anxiety as debilitating. Yet, it has been put forward that the influence of statistics anxiety needs validated among different populations. Previous work has noted an antipathy towards quantitative methods among students studying sociology, whereas students in subjects such as geography or psychology have been argued to be more comfortable with numeracy. It might therefore be expected that sociology students experience substantial negative outcomes associated with statistics anxiety. This analysis is the first in the UK to examine statistics anxiety and course performance involving a sample of social science students, across a range of institutions. Our results show that on average students’ experience a slightly worse course result for a relatively large increase in statistics anxiety score, with little evidence of variation between disciplines.