The Correlates of Statistics Anxiety: Relationships With Spatial Anxiety, Mathematics Anxiety and Gender

Authors

  • Rose-Marie Gibeau
    School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • Erin A. Maloney
    School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • Sébastien Béland
    Département d'Administration et Fondements de l'Éducation, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
  • Daniel Lalande
    Département des Sciences de la Santé, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, Canada
  • Michael Cantinotti
    Département de Psychologie, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Canada
  • Alexandre Williot
    Département des Sciences de la Santé, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, Canada
  • Lucile Chanquoy
    Département de Psychologie, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France
  • Jessica Simon
    Département de Psychologie, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium
  • Marie-Aude Boislard-Pépin
    Département de Sexologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Canada
  • Denis Cousineau
    School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

This study investigates the correlates of statistics anxiety. Considering that statistics anxiety and spatial anxiety have been separately correlated with related constructs (e.g., mathematics anxiety, academic performance, etc.), the possibility that spatial anxiety plays a role in statistics anxiety is explored. When facing statistics or mathematics operations, people may imagine or visualize the task operations they must do to obtain the result. To examine this hypothesis, 778 students in a Social or Health Sciences program, enrolled in a –often mandatory– statistics course from Canadian, French and Belgian universities completed an online survey. The results show moderate to strong positive correlations between all three types of anxiety (spatial, mathematics, and statistics). In addition, a mediation analysis reveals the intermediate role played by mathematics anxiety in the relationship between spatial and statistics anxieties. Nonetheless, the direct link from spatial anxiety to statistics anxiety is non-negligible in the model. Finally, the results also indicate that women report higher levels of statistics anxiety, which may be partly explained by their higher level of spatial anxiety.