The Relationship Between Doctoral Students\u27 Self-Reported Type of Statistics Anxiety and Final Grades in an Online Statistics Course

Statistics anxiety is an issue for many students, particularly those in degree programs in the social sciences. These students may have very limited mathematics or statistics backgrounds and may experience negative attitudes or feelings of anxiety when faced with taking a statistics course. Enrollment in online doctoral programs in the social sciences is growing, and these programs typically require at least one statistics or quantitative methods course. Many online doctoral students experience some form of statistics anxiety, which could result in poor course performance. The purpose of the current study was to determine if there was a predictive relationship between self-reported types of statistics anxiety and doctoral students’ final course grades in an online statistics course. A predictive correlational study was conducted in order to determine if the self-reported types of statistics anxiety could predict the final course grades for doctoral education students taking a fully online statistics course at a large faith-based university in the Southeast United States. Data were collected using a quantitative content analysis of discussion board assignments completed by students in a Doctor of Education or Doctor of Philosophy in education program who took a required 8-week, fully online statistics course during the 2019-2020 academic year. A multiple linear regression showed no significant predictive relationship between type of self-reported statistics anxiety and final course grades