Antecedents of Statistics Anxiety Among Senior High School Students

Rhodora  Aquino,; Syrene Mae  Butticon,; Mary Joy  Mendoza,; John Carlo  Armando,; Lady Valen Charon  Dela Peña,

Antecedents of Statistics Anxiety Among Senior High School Students

Rhodora Aquino | Syrene Mae Butticon | Mary Joy Mendoza | John Carlo Armando | Lady Valen Charon Dela Peña

Discipline: Education

Abstract:

Senior high school students are required to enroll in statistics and probability subject as a necessary part of their curriculum. Many years have seen an increase in the number of articles on statistics anxiety. Statistics anxiety, which is widespread among students taking courses related to statistics or research methods, refers to a specific field of academic anxiety. Consequently, statistics anxiety is a debilitating anxiety which negatively affect students’ performance. This study focused on the situational (statistics background and statistics performance), dispositional (learning style and strand), and environmental (sex) antecedents of statistics anxiety among senior high school students (Onwuegbuzie and Wilson, 2003). Descriptive- comparative-correlational quantitative design was applied. An adopted questionnaire, Statistics Anxiety Measure (Earp, 2007) was used to collect data from 303 participants that was chosen through convenience sampling. Frequency counts and percentage, were used to analyze the demographic data while one-way MANOVA, one-way ANOVA and Pearson’s r were used in testing the research hypotheses. The findings revealed that the average level of statistics anxiety of senior high school students is low; male students have higher levels of anxiety for having statistics as their subject; students who are enrolled on non-mathematical strands like TVL, AD, and HUMSS experience more anxiety than those who are enrolled in STEM and ABM strands; visual and auditory learners have higher levels of anxiety and lower statistics performance than students with kinesthetic and reading/writing learning styles; students without prior knowledge about statistics in junior high school have higher levels of anxiety in terms of having a statistics subject and performing well in class; and statistics anxiety is negatively related to statistics performance.