How deep is your approach to learn? A study with undergraduate psychology students.

Statistical skills are deemed important for psychology students as a prerequisite to learn psychometrics. Thus, the aim of the current study was to identify the learning approach that is more likely to result in better retention of statistics prerequisites to learn psychometrics, and to highlight the individual characteristics of students who adopt it. Data were collected from a sample of students enrolled in a psychometrics course and who had previously passed a statistics exam. At the beginning of the course, several scales were administered to measure statistics self-confidence and attitudes, learning approaches, learning conceptions and teaching preferences, and statistics knowledge. Results showed that knowledge was positively associated to a deep approach to learn, and several individual differences were observed between students who decided to use vs not to use this approach. These findings contribute to current state of knowledge on statistics education and they suggest areas of intervention.