Students’ Attitude and Academic Achievement in Statistics: A Correlational Study

Abstract

Students’ attitude towards the course plays an important role in the learning achievement of the student. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the attitude and academic achievement of the students in statistics. The descriptive-correlational research design was employed in this study. The sample size of this study was 560 students enrolled in a business statistics course. The Survey of Attitude towards Statistics (SATS-36) instrument was used in this study with the 6 attitude components namely affective, cognitive competence, value, interest, difficulty, and effort. Pearson’s correlation was used to test the significant relationships between the attitude components and the academic performance of the students in the course. Research findings revealed that the 5 attitude components such as affective (r = 0.203, p = 0.001), cognitive competence (r = 0.231, p = 0.000), value (r = 0.182, p= 0.003), interest (r = 0.208, p = 0.001) and effort (r = 0.243, p = 0.000) have a significant positive relationship on the academic achievement of the students in statistics. However, the difficulty component (r = -0.115, p = 0.064) found no significant correlation in the academic achievement of the students. Hence, educators should give much effort to the students’ attitude towards the course as this would propel them to achieve higher in the learning process. Likewise, educators must have an intervention or other enhancement methods to eliminate difficulties experienced by the students in statistics.