Attitude toward statistics of middle cycle students diversifi ed in new state educational institutions Sparta

Abstract

To determine the components that affect the attitude of students in the middle and diversifi ed cycle, the instrument proposed by Estrada (2002) was applied to 595 students in the educational institutions of Nueva Esparta state selected using probabilistic sampling of the three-stage type. The results of the descriptive analysis indicate a favorable attitude of the respondents with respect to statistics. Likewise, the results obtained through the application of exploratory factor analysis for categorical data from the criterion of the determinant of the polychoric correlation matrix and using the main components as an extraction method with an oblique promax rotation, yield four (4) components that explain 53.25% of the total variability:Affective and Cognitive, Diffi culty and Anxiety, Usefulness and Value, which are similar to those obtained by Estrada (2002) and Mondéjar, Vargas & Bayot (2008), regarding the number of factors, but they differ in the denomination and order of these . The highest correlation is between the affective and cognitive dimension and the value component (0.38), this proximity indicates that the pleasure a student has towards statistics can infl uence the assessment and importance assigned to it.