Antecedents of statistics anxiety in a higher education system
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Date
2018-08
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Department of Economics and Applied Statistics, College of Economics and Management Sciences, Kampala International University
Abstract
This study contended that learning statistics and its rudiments were perceived as complicated
compared to some other courses offered at the university level. Further, this investigation
contested the existence of statistics anxiety among postgraduate students in an in-site university
setting. Relationships and differences were determined in this study utilizing the constructs of
antecedents of statistics anxiety namely academic procrastination, perfectionism, and gender.
The objectives were (1) to establish the relationship between academic procrastination and
statistics anxiety; (2) to find out the relationship between perfectionism and statistics anxiety;
and (3) to investigate the differences between gender and statistics anxiety. The data from
randomly selected 136 postgrad students (Kampala International University, Uganda) referring
to dispositional (procrastination and perfectionism) and environmental antecedents (gender) and
statistics anxiety were scientifically elicited, processed and analyzed utilizing the quantitativepost positivist’s research paradigm model. The findings revealed a positive but insignificant
relationship between academic procrastination and statistics anxiety; a significant adverse
correlation between perfectionism and statistics anxiety; an insignificant positive correlation
existed between gender and statistics anxiety, and differences in statistics anxiety between the
female and male students existed. Notably from the results then, academic procrastination did
not significantly affect the students’ statistics anxiety; the students with higher levels of
perfectionism tended to have lower levels of statistics anxiety while the levels of statistics
anxiety among the female students were slightly greater than that of the male students.
Description
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Keywords
Academic-procrastination, Anxiety, Gender, Perfectionism, Statistics