Attitude toward statistic in college students : an empirical study in public university

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 Politécnica de Aguascalientes using the questionnaire proposed by Auzmendi. The statistical procedure used was factorial analysis with an extracted principal component. The Statistics Hypothesis: Ho: Rho = 0 has no correlation, while Ha: Rho ≠ 0 does. Statistics test to prove: x2, Bartlett's test of sphericity, KMO (Kaiser-Meyer_Olkin) Significance level: Alpha = 0.05; p < 0.01 The results obtained from the sphericity test of Bartlett KMO (0.592), Chi square X2 390.552 df 10, Sig. 0.00 < p 0.01, MSA (Usefulness 0.656, Motivation 0.552, Likeness 0.705, Confidence 0.633 and Anxiety 0.507). With all this we obtained significant evidence in order to reject Ho. Finally we obtained two factors that explain attitude toward statistic in college students: One of them is composed by three elements: Confidence (.852), Likeness (.818) and Usefulness (.768) and the other is composed by two elements: Anxiety (.837) and Motivation (.800). Their explanatory power for each factor is expressed by their Eigenvalue: 2.170 and 1.383 (with % variance 43.39 and 27.67 respectively, Total variance explained 71.05%).