Are students too anxious for statistics anxiety workshops?

Abstract

Statistics is a widely taught subject in Higher Education but for many students, anxiety about statistics interferes with the learning process. Statistics anxiety workshops to help students understand and reduce statistics anxiety were developed by the authors and in 2020/21 delivered collaboratively and remotely with specific cohorts of students at three institutions. Prior to the workshops, all students within the targeted cohorts were asked to complete a survey which included measures of statistics anxiety, and asked if they were interested in attending the voluntary workshop. This enabled a comparison of the characteristics of groups who were interested or not. The workshops successfully attracted the targeted students, since those attending had higher overall statistics anxiety, software and maths anxiety, and anxiety around learning statistics. However, students with higher help seeking anxiety were less likely to attend.