Misconceptions in Descriptive Statistics Among Postgraduates in Social Sciences

摘要

Many efforts on identifying misconceptions among schools and undergraduate students have been done, but for postgraduates, in particular serviced teachers, are yet to be understood. Researches, thesis writing and publications require substantial level of statistical reasoning for postgraduates. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze postgraduates’ misconceptions in descriptive statistics (central tendency and variability). The instrument was a set of questions design to test statistical reasoning in descriptive statistics. The test was administered to 122 postgraduates who are enrolling in a course on application of statistics in educational research which is a requirement for their master program in education. The misconceptions were analyzed based on the work of various researchers (Lee & Meletiou, 2003; Magina & Cazorla, 2008). This paper describes some similar misconceptions that were found by other researchers; however, some misconceptions on the concept of average were not seen among postgraduates. The overall results show that some postgraduates have poor statistical reasoning skills. This study suggests that statistical reasoning should be taught strategically so as to minimize misconceptions among postgraduate students as well as to empower their statistical reasoning ability.