Abstract:

This work analyses the attitudes towards Econometrics of Economics students. Students’ attitudes are compared at the beginning and at the end of an introductory Econometrics course. The objective is to analyze if the first contact with the subject and the teaching received by the lecturer has helped improve the attitudes of the students towards the discipline.

Econometrics is the dominant research methodology in Economics, and it is also frequently used in other social sciences disciplines. Skills related to this topic are in high demand in the job market around the world, both in the public and private sectors. Therefore, it is important for future graduates in Economics to acquire solid training in this subject. However, Econometrics lecturers frequently find that Economics students do not have positive attitudes toward the subject. This can be a problem for learning the contents and acquiring econometrics skills since attitudes are crucial for the learning process.

Attitudes towards a subject influence the acquisition of knowledge and skills by students, and the way in which they will apply them in their professional future. For these reasons, it has been argued that the development of positive attitudes should be a desired course outcome. Although there are no previous studies in the field of Econometrics, studies carried out in a similar field such as Statistics have shown that active teaching methodologies can have a positive effect on students' attitudes towards the subject. [1] suggested that the use of active learning methodologies could help to overcome the deficiencies in quantitative skills for subjects with high mathematical and statistical requirements, such as Econometrics. In this sense, the context in which this work is framed is that of an introductory Econometrics course in which the teaching strategy is the flipped classroom. Students’ attitudes towards Econometrics are assessed at the beginning and at the end of the course. The objective is to analyze if attitudes improve after completing the course.

A questionnaire including an adaptation of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS ©) [2] , along with some questions about sociodemographic and academic characteristics of students, such as gender, age, studies, is used for assessing the students’ attitudes at the beginning and at the end of the course. There are no other studies of this type in the field of Econometrics.

Results reveal that some attitudinal components improve their ratings after completing the course.

References:
[1] S. Cook, D. Watson, and D. Vougas, “Solving the quantitative skills gap: a flexible learning call to arms!,” High. Educ. Pedagog., vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 17–31, Jan. 2019.
[2] C. Schau, “Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics - 36.” 2003.

Keywords:

Students’ attitudes, flipped classroom, higher education.