Abstract:

Statistics is a transversal matter in the curricula of a wide range of knowledge areas in the social and natural sciences. However, both pre-university and undergraduate university students normally show a negative attitude towards statistics. This prejudice can play an important role in the academic and professional development of students, especially when negative attitude towards statistics leads to poor academic performance. In this paper we provide the English version of the Auzmendi Scale to measure attitude towards statistics (originally developed in Spanish). This version of the scale has been developed using two main approaches. Firstly, a forward-translation and back-translation phase was carried out in order to have a preliminary version of the scale. Secondly, the preliminary version of the scale was assessed by a panel of experts in psychometrics and research methodology to debug misunderstandings. The scale contains 25 items grouped into five dimensions (utility, anxiety, confidence, enjoyment and motivation). This scale might be useful in English speaking contexts to measure the attitudes towards statistics for different purposes. For example, it could be used to check the change in attitudes towards statistics under different training programs. Also, the scale could be used to investigate the variables affecting attitudes to statistics in order to design new instructional strategies to improve the teaching-learning process.

Keywords:

Attitudes, statistics, measurement, scale, adaptation.