Abstract:

In a society in which technology and changes are increasingly fast, the role of Statistics has become increasingly important. The students' attitudes towards Statistics, according to the literature review, are very interrelated with the affective and cognitive components and with the value attributed to this discipline in terms of its importance and usefulness in their personal and professional life. The psychological well-being of students, in addition to all other related components, as well as their attitudes towards Statistics and Technology, can affect their involvement and learning of contents in the scope of this discipline.

The present research, through a questionnaire, aims to better understand the attitudes that students have towards Statistics and Technology and what are the factors that can affect their learning. The Questionnaire used includes, among other variables, the Life Satisfaction Scale (Diener et al., 1985), consisting of five items measured in a 5-point Likert scale (1- Strongly Disagree to 5-Strongly Agree), and a set of twenty-eight items related to the students' attitudes towards Statistics and Technology, measured in a 7-point Likert scale (1- Strongly Disagree to 7-Strongly Agree). According to Anastasiadou (2010), this set of items is distributed into five different attitude subscales (Statistics Cognitive Competence-Confidence (6 items); Technology Cognitive Competence-Confidence (4 items); Attitudes to learning statistics with technology (6 items); Value (6 items); Affect (6 items)).

The participants in this study were students from Portuguese Universities who had already attended Statistics courses during the 1st cycle of higher education. A structural equation model analysis, performed using PLS, revealed a statistically significant relationship between satisfaction with life and the five subscales of Students Attitudes toward Statistics and Technology. In the model used, almost all the interrelationships between the factors of attitudes of students were statistically significant at level 0.01, suggesting that the use of technology affects the students' attitudes regarding the components "Affect" (emotions concerning statistics) and "Value" (usefulness of statistics in students' personal and professional life).

Keywords:

Students' attitudes towards Statistics and Technology, life satisfaction, structural equation model analysis.