Mr Wakefield L Morys-Carter

Psychology students often feel anxious about learning statistics, which can impact their performance.  However, less research has explored statistics confidence, which may be an important way to reduce the negative connotations of associating statistics with anxiety.  We aimed to explore whether modifying an existing measure of statistics anxiety (the STARS scale) and reframing the questions so students rated their confidence instead, would be associated with competence, prior knowledge and experience. A total of 104 undergraduate students completed an online questionnaire comprising these measures.  The factor structure of the STARS scale was predominantly maintained when wording was changed to measure confidence instead of anxiety.  Confidence was related to experience and competence, but not knowledge.  Two aspects of confidence (interpretation of statistics, and exam confidence) plus initial experiences were significant predictors of competence. Confidence was a mediator of the relationship between experience and competence.  These findings suggest statistics confidence can be measured in a similar way to anxiety, and highlight areas that could be addressed to increase competence.  Future research is needed to explore the relationship between statistics anxiety and statistics confidence, as well as to determine their individual impact on performance in assessments. 

Students often struggle with learning about statistics, which encompass a large proportion of a psychology degree.  This pilot study explored how first- and final-year students reflected on their experiences of being taught this topic, in order to identify needs that could be addressed in a project to improve their learning. 

First-year students reported that they initially found their module challenging but that it became easier towards the end.  Third year students recognised the importance of the topic but were not confident in their abilities.  Most students reported anxiety about statistics.  Although students were positive about practical classes, many felt that they could not easily remember the materials.   The findings suggested three areas of focus to improve student learning.  Firstly, diverse needs and levels of ability should be catered for.  Secondly, students need help to go beyond surface learning and button clicking.  Finally, low levels of engagement should be addressed.

This work has informed a project to develop an online resource to address the above identified needs to enhance teaching of this important topic. 

Statistics and Research Methods modules are often unpopular with psychology students; however, at Oxford Brookes University the seminar component of the second-year research methods module tends to get very positive feedback. Over half of the seminars work towards the submission of a research-based experimental lab report. This article introduces and reflects on some of the recent changes made to improve this coursework by increasing the similarities with staff research; specifically targeting the areas of supervision, ethical review, peer review and dissemination. These developments are aligned with the teaching fellowship project, Vertical Enhancement of Statistics and Psychology Research, and aim to encourage second-year students to treat their group experiments as part of the department’s research activity, rather than simply as pieces of coursework. Enhancing this research-based aspect of the student experience teaching will hopefully, in turn, lead to higher quality third-year dissertations by increasing student enthusiasm for academic research. 

Object-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a mask, such as four dots that surround a brief target item, onsets simultaneously with the target and offsets a short time after the target, rather than simultaneously with it. OSM is a reduction in accuracy of reporting the target with the temporally trailing mask, compared with the simultaneously offsetting mask. It has been thought that OSM occurs only if attention cannot be rapidly focused, or prefocused, on the target location. One line of evidence for this is a reported interaction between target display set size and the duration of the trailing mask. We analyze the evidence for this interaction and suggest it occurs only as an artifact of data being compressed by a ceiling effect. We report six experiments that support this interpretation by showing that the interaction is always absent unless a ceiling effect is induced. We go on to analyze other evidence to support the notion that attention modulates OSM, and argue that in each case, the data either reflect a ceiling effect or can be explained in another way. Our data and our analyses of the existing literature have strong implications for how OSM should be conceptualized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).