Exploring Statistics Anxiety in Several Introductory Statistics Courses to Understand Differences Between Types of Students and Types of Courses

Despite its importance in modern curricula, many students find statistics courses challenging, and the existence of barriers among students to learning statistical reasoning is an important area of study. This study explores the presence and level of statistics anxiety in several cohorts of students studying introductory statistics. The relationship with statistical anxiety dependent on specialisms is explored, along with their curricular choices. An online questionnaire was developed to explore the effects of statistical anxiety and attitudes towards learning statistics. Comparisons were made both within and between the cohorts of students and showed that demographic factors and gender play a minor but statistically significant role in explaining levels of statistical anxiety, but that no significant differences in statistics anxiety existed between cohorts.