Relation between attitudes to mathematics and rating of NaUKMA Sociology Bachelor’s Program students

The article describes the problems that students of sociology face in a process of learning mathematics in university. Mainly students feel a fear when dealing with mathematical courses or related to them, such as courses on data analysis, theory of chances, math statistics and others that are extremely important for future sociologists. The article shows that the problems go deep into previous experience from childhood and school education, when lack of teachers’ patience, lack of communication between teachers and pupils, overloaded educational programs, and other features of modern school learning become a basis for low self-evaluation and insecurity about mathematics. Much attention is given to their attitude to mathematics as a subject and the reasons why it appears. The author has come up with a classification of 3 types of attitude, such as positive, neutral, and negative, and based this classification, the significant association between the attitude and students’ rating is found. Additionally, other significant associations are shown. For example, an attitude to mathematics is a base on which students choose qualitative or quantitative methods of sociological research in their course papers or theses. The attitude has a strong association with their evaluation of their mathematical abilities. As a result, regression model for students’ rating prediction on the basis of the self-evaluation mentioned above is built, and the author states that feelings to mathematics make a great influence on the successful process of university education in the field of sociology despite the fact sociology is considered to belong to humanities. The study sample consists of 135 students of sociology of NaUKMA from bachelor’s program of all years