ADAPTING THE SURVEY OF ATTITUDES TOWARDS STATISTICS (SATS-36) FOR ESTONIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to adapt the Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics (SATS-36) for Estonian secondary school students in order to develop a valid instrument to measure students’ attitudes within the Estonian educational context. The SATS-36 was administered to Estonian-speaking secondary school students before their compulsory statistics course. Because the fit indices for confirmatory factor analysis did not indicate a good fit, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to find a new model. It validated a four-factor structure of the scale, excluding nine items. Good indices for both reliability and validity were obtained. Trends in secondary school students’ attitudes were also examined to investigate the effects of gender and gender combined with the level of education. Results showed that students tended to feel rather positively about statistics at the beginning of the course. All four factors displayed differences between boys and girls. Comparison of lower and upper secondary level students showed that students from the upper secondary level value statistics more highly. The authors recommend SATS with some small proposed changes to make it even more suitable for the secondary level.

First published May 2017 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives