Student Attitudes Toward Learning Statistics with R

Statistics plays an extremely important role within the discipline of psychology, but statistics courses are notoriously unpopular amongst psychology students. We examined attitudes toward statistics and attitudes toward the statistical software package R in both undergraduate and graduate students in psychology across the duration of a statistics course. Participants’ responses were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Results demonstrated that students in introductory level courses generally held neutral (not negative) attitudes, but students at higher study levels held somewhat positive attitudes towards R and statistics generally. Qualitative data revealed wide variability in the factors that impacted attitudes toward statistics or R, with common themes such as instructor, perceived difficulty, enjoying or disliking statistics or software, and achieving confidence with statistics or software. While not all students enjoyed learning R, our findings demonstrate that many students enjoyed statistics or R, most students found statistics/R valuable and generally reported feeling competent or confident using it by the end of their course.