A family of instruments for assessing statistics and data science learning experiences

Music City Center 

Attitudes matter in education! The Motivational Attitudes in Statistics and Data Science Education (MASDER) project has developed a family of four attitudinal instruments and two learning environment inventories to measure student attitudes toward statistics, instructor attitudes toward teaching statistics, and the learning environment in both statistics and data science. Each MASDER instrument was developed using a staggered, iterative design process. Validity for the four attitudinal instruments is established by the design process and psychometric analyses: CFA and multidimensional IRT were employed in multiple pilot studies to result in robust final instruments. For the student statistics instrument, based on 15,000+ responses across several pilot studies, psychometric analyses support measuring 11 constructs using a 38-item instrument with good internal consistency reliability. The surveys will be freely available through our website (portal.sdsattitudes.com) and as Qualtrics and PDF files and can be used to study evidence-based best practices in our disciplines. Researchers can access their data and receive customized, automated reports comparing their sample to the nation.

attitudes

statistics education

data science education

learning environment

undergraduate

psychometrics 

Section on Statistics and Data Science Education