PILOT STUDY FOR VALIDATION OF A QUESTIONNAIRE ON ATTITUDES TOWARDS STATISTICS IN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Often undergraduate students of Psychology Degree go through a wide spectrum of avoidance, postponement in enrolment in courses related to statistics, delay in carrying out the activities and attach little value to its importance (Onwuegbuzie and Wilson, 2003; Onwuegbuzie, 2004). All of them may reduce their success and academic achievement. According to some researchers, one of the reasons is the attitude that takes the student to these courses. In order to adapt the teaching materials and didactic resources for teaching for the "Data Analysis in the Behavioral Sciences" course is necessary to identify attitudes towards statistics. We constructed a questionnaire which aims to obtain a profile towards statistic of students in Psychology Degree. The aim of this study is to carry out a pilot study for the validation and analysis of the factorial structure of a questionnaire for examining attitudes towards statistics in college. Method: In order to construct our questionnaire, the scale of attitudes towards statistics by Velandrino and Parodi (1999) was used. This test consists of 50-items with five points Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). We used the follow outcome measures: the item analysis, validity analysis with Auzmendi's questionnaire (1992), reliability of the total scale and subscales, and factorial analysis. All analyzes were managed with the IBM SPSS v. 21. The sample involved 115 undergraduate students enrolled in the Data Analysis in Behavioral Sciences course, 1st year of Psychology Degree.