Exploring Achievement Behaviors in Non-Major Statistics Course: An Expectancy-Value Perspective and Thoughts for Practice

Statistics education is increasingly important to our society with enrolment increases of 16% in introductory statistics courses and 85% in upper-level statistics courses. Research has demonstrated many factors related to students’ behaviors and outcomes in statistics courses such as past achievement, attitudes, and effort. We sought to model these factors together to better understand how introductory statistics students’ attitudes were related to students' achievement behaviors and what student characteristics mediated such relationships. Structural equation modeling with data from N=301 students in an introductory statistics course for psychology majors revealed that majors with higher GPAs had more interest, enjoyment as well as utility value for statistics, and these variables were in turn related to expectations for success or achievement behaviors. Females had lower interest in statistics, and this was related to lower expectations of success. The findings highlight the need to increase interest and enjoyment and utility value for non-majors studying statistics. Recommendations for how to adapt the statistics classroom to that end are discussed.