Abstract

BARRIOS, Iván et al. Attitudes of Paraguayan university students about Statistics. Rep. cient. FACEN [online]. 2022, vol.13, n.1, pp.51-56. ISSN 2222-145X.  https://doi.org/10.18004/rcfacen.2022.13.1.51.

This research sought to describe the attitudes that university students in Paraguay have towards the teaching of Statistics in their respective university careers. This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study, conducted through a survey shared on the Internet during the months of August to October 2021, with accidental sampling. To assess attitudes towards Statistics, an adaptation to Spanish of the "Escala de actitudes hacia la Estadística" was used, which has good psychometric properties and consists of four factors: security, importance, usefulness and desire to know. A total of 295 subjects participated, of whom 63.7% (n=188) were women and 64.4% (n=190) were students at a public university. The safety factor was related to the career studied (F [4; 290]=2.56; p=0.039). In a post hoc test it was found that the only pair with a significant difference was between Medical and Health Sciences students and Engineering students, since the latter had more favorable attitudes towards Statistics in the safety factor (p=0.032). Those who took an extracurricular Statistics course scored higher on all factors; however, only the usefulness factor was significantly associated (t [293]=-2.911; p=0.004). Participants who had published a scientific article also had higher scores on all scale factors, with three of them being significant: importance (t [293]=2.039; p=0.042), usefulness (t [293]=2.153; p=0.032) and desire to know (t [293]=2.196; p=0.029). It is advisable that university authorities provide the necessary means for students to understand and appreciate the value of statistical science in the day-to-day generation of knowledge and scientific research, pillars of university education.

Keywords : university students; attitudes; statistics.

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