This paper aims to study the influence of attitudes towards statistics on statistics engagement among undergraduate students in a Malaysian public university. This study was conducted on first-year students from various fields of study and specialization taking an introductory statistics course during Semester 1 in 2016/2017. A random sample consisting of 293 students were selected to be respondents for the survey. A pilot study conducted on 25 students had reliability indices of 0.93 for statistics engagement and 0.80 for attitudes towards statistics instruments. Descriptive analysis revealed that students generally exhibited positive attitudes towards statistics based on the overall median score of 3.00, as well as for the domains of attitudes with median scores of 3.00 for each. Besides that, the median score for statistics engagement was 4.00 indicating that students' statistics engagement level was above average. Correlation analysis revealed a significant relationship between attitudes towards statistics and statistics engagement (r_s = 0.46, p < 0.05). Furthermore, statistics engagement was also positively related to all four domains of attitudes as demonstrated by correlation coefficients for affect (r_s = 0.41, p < 0.05), cognitive competence (r_s = 0.55, p < 0.05), value (r_s = 0.31, p < 0.05) and difficulty (r_s = 0.21, p < 0.05). Subsequently, multiple linear regression analysis showed that the domains of attitudes explained 50% of the total variation in statistics engagement and cognitive competence domain was the most significant contributor. These findings depicted that attitudes towards statistics play a vital role in students' statistics engagement. In essence, having positive attitudes towards statistics will promote statistics engagement among students and eventually increase their achievement and performance in statistics.
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