Comparison of attitudes towards statistics in graduate and undergraduate health sciences' students

Abstract

Many of the major decisions taken by health professionals have some statistical basis. Nowadays the interest in attitudes towards statistics has increased since there is some evidence that these can impede the effective learning of statistics and/or the correct development of useful statistical intuitions. In this work, we analyze the components of graduate (n=385) and undergraduate (n=507) health sciences students’ attitudes towards statistics through their responses to the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics (SATS) scale. Our results show that health sciences’ students have, in general, a positive attitude towards statistics and although graduate students value it more significantly, have better feelings and perception of self-competence, knowledge and intellectual skills, they rate it as difficult as undergraduate students.