Investigating students’ use of official statistical data

Promoting Understanding of Statistics about Society IASE Roundtable Conference

The data deluge over the past twenty years has resulted in an explosion in volumes of available data. Access to data is increasingly easy; technology advances have resulted in increasingly sophisticated ways to represent and analyse these data. Citizens are confronted with statistics and numbers in a multitude of ways, so the imperative for improving statistical literacy is strong if we want a well-informed and data-literate population. Social sciences are embracing quantitative methods as demand grows, in the private and public sectors, for evidence-informed policy and a greater sophistication in approaching difficult to measure constructs, such as global sustainability, is emerging. The Sustainable Development Goals set out by the UN1 in September 2015, and the data requirements associated with them, may accelerate all of these trends. This paper will reflect on the authors’ experiences of working with real data in the context of schools, and university social science courses, ove...

Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science, 2021

This paper aims to reveal the beliefs of students and fresh university graduates about teaching statistics during their university studies with focus on using statistical software. The objective is to detect the approach of faculties to statistics education and to find out which didactic materials and teaching methods are mainly used. Students’ opinions are captured by means of a questionnaire survey and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show the increasing importance of quantitative research and the necessity of improving statistical thinking. Unfortunately, the teaching methods used in various statistical courses are outdated and unattractive for most students. They call for an active and modern approach. Teaching statistics with the statistical software support seems to be the right way to make statistics accessible to students. The recommendation is to take students’ notions into account when preparing statistical courses.

Analysis of the future research needs for Official Statistics 3 Foreword Research and innovation is becoming increasingly important in the new ICT-oriented society in which information is widely used. The acceleration of high quality information makes it necessary to improve the data production process while more and more using sophisticated methods. Catchwords like micro data provision, geographical and small area information, as well as register data immediately lead to major advances in research and innovation in Official Statistics methodology. In times of decreasing budgets with increasing needs for policy-oriented research it becomes a challenge to setup an integrated research and innovation agenda which connects Official Statistics, research institutes, as well as leading university researchers with background in survey statistics.

2009

According to Méndez Ramírez(1) “Statistics becomes an aid to the process of scientific research; however, in order to be effective differences between what is statistics and the science on which it is applied must be cleared. That is to say, the approaches of assumptions, ...

Journal of Statistics Education, 2010

The use of a real data set has the potential to increase engagement and learning in students who enrol in a statistics course at university. The present report describes the development of an approach that uses a real data set, but one that is collected from the students. The questions are designed so that the data set can be used throughout the course to illustrate relevant concepts and methods in the application of introductory statistics. An evaluation was conducted via individual interviews with a random sample of 38 students. Quantitative and qualitative responses indicated that the survey led to in-class participation, was perceived to be a different approach, and contributed to an interest in, understanding of, and appreciation of the relevance of statistics. The creative use of student data is recommended to facilitate the learning of statistics.

Journal of Statistical and Econometric Methods, 2013

This study aims to measure student’s attitude towards statistics through a model that considers the variables proposed by Auzmendi (1992). Was examined whether the constructs: usefulness, motivation, likeness, confidence and anxiety influence the student's attitude towards statistics. Were surveyed face to face 328 students at the Universidad PolitA©cnica de Aguascalientes using the questionnaire proposed by Auzmendi. The statistical procedure used was factorial analysis with an extracted principal component. The Statistics Hypothesis: Ho: I = 0 has no correlation, while Ha: I ≠0 does. Statistics test to prove: I§2, Bartlett‟s test of sphericity, KMO (Kaiser-Meyer_Olkin) Significance level: I± = 0.05; p

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research

Studying Statistics to a number of students might be very difficult to understand due the lack of knowledge of the statistics and low interest of the subject. However, to some students majoring in mathematics might be easy to comprehend and operate the statistics. This study aimed to find out the students' perceptions and attitudes towards the statistics. The study employed descriptive statistics. The writers collected the data through questionnaire to get the quantitative data. The result of the study showed that in terms of the students' perception towards statistics most of them have stated that they mostly agreed with all the statements dealing with perceptions. This can be seen from the first three statements that they could identify the distribution, measurement, and procedure of doing the statistics. The only thing they disagreed is on the ability to communicate the result of statistics and their perception regarding the easiness of the statistics. In terms of the students' attitudes towards statistics, it is clear that the majority of the students showed their high feeling concerning the statistics. In terms of attitude on cognitive competence, most of them also agreed with the way of thinking to do statistics, understanding it, and requiring a great deal of discipline.

2009

The main of the paper is to summarize and analyse the changes of education of elementary or introductionary statistics in the field of social science studies in Hungarian higher education. In the pre-Bologna period, there was a relatively important differentiation by specialization. Some students had only a one semester course (composed of lecture and seminar), where only descriptive statistics methods were taught. In the case of more methodologically intensive specializations, like sociology, a second semester of inductive statistics was added (this second semester was preceded by a semester of probability theory and consisted of lecture and double seminar). Thereby a total of 60 or 150 contact hours were available to teach the competence of statistical reading. After the implementation of the Bologna process, the available time slots for statistics have been extremely reduced. As a general rule, only a one semester statistics course is offered including only seminars with a total of 30 hours contact hours. In the new situation, the curriculum had to be extremely cut. Between the topics of descriptive statistics one cannot find anymore the index theory and time series analysis. Even if the students do not have any advanced (college level) probability theory, the basics of inductive statistics are included, the concept of interval estimate and hypothesis testing are taught through simple examples. We think that the large decrease of statistics education is not favourable for the students of social sciences, mainly the lack of differentiation. The necessary knowledge is diverse in the specializations of sociology, politology, international relations, and media and communication studies.

South African Journal of Higher Education, 2008

In this age of rapid information expansion and technology, statistics is playing an ever increasing role in education, particularly also in the training of social scientists. Statistics enables the social scientist to obtain a quantitative awareness of socio economic phenomena hence is essential in their training. Statistics, however, is becoming increasingly problematic in its influence on the lives of social science students. Has statistics education of social science students evolved in order to keep pace with changes in modern society? This article examines the common trends in teaching statistics to social science students and then makes some suggestions that would potentially increase the social science graduate's appreciation for the power of statistics in their profession.

Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 2021

If one assesses the quality of statistics according to whether they are fit for purpose, one must put the question of this very purpose at the beginning, not only for the production of statistics, but also for their use and the literacy required. In this contribution, public discourse, political communication and decision-making processes are placed at the beginning of the argument. Official statistics work with a conceptual approach in which very much emphasis is placed on standardisation of products and processes, thus ensuring comparability of facts in regional and temporal terms. Only in this way can statistics be used as a common language to objectify conflicting issues. It is not about everyone being able to create his or her own statistical model of reality, quite the opposite. In this sense, public statistics are an infrastructure, comparable to rail transport. Moreover, statistical processes today are highly rationalised and industrialised, comparable to a factory. So, when...