COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ATTITUDES OF SCIENCE AND NON-SCIENCE STUDENTS TOWARDS STATISTICS

The current study was conducted to determine whether there would be a difference between science and non-science students attitudes towards statistics. Two hundred and eight undergraduates were pooled from three public tertiary institutions in the Kogi State of Nigeria as the study participants. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted. The participants completed a self-report measure of Survey of Attitude toward Statistics (SATS-36), originally developed by Schau (2003). An independent t-test performed on the data established a statistically significant difference in the attitudes of the science and non-science students towards statistics at MD = 0.77 (95% CI, 0.57 to 0.77), t (206) = 12.747, p = .001. It was concluded that there is variation between the attitude of science students and non-science students towards the teaching and learning of statistics. The study recommends that robust attitude change strategies be adopted to reshape the attitudes of the non-science students towards statistics.