If I would ask a gold coin for every time I heard this statement, I would be retired living on the Maldives by now.

Imagine how much bluer the ocean is compared to Lake Burley Griffin…

Or how much fresher the air…

Maybe I should start asking for a gold coin…

More seriously though, it is quite common amongst postgraduate students (or even undergraduate) and also early-career academics to believe that they don’t have a statistical bone in their bodies. As data and statistical analysis are an integral part of almost any quantitative research, this is obviously causing a lot of angst and misconceptions around their abilities as a researcher.

So where is this coming from? Why do researchers believe they can’t be good at statistics (if they do not have a mathematics degress)? And how much is this a perception rather than an actual reflection of ability? Is there such a thing as “statistical anxiety”?

The first thing to realise is that you’re not alone! It turns out that up to 80% of college students (U.S. data) have statistical anxiety (Siew et al. 2019). They used a Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS) which rates feelings about the value of statistics, self-concepts about math ability, fear of statistics teachers, interpretation anxiety, test and class anxiety, and fear of asking for help. In general terms, students fell in two categories: (1) students who don’t think statistics are useful and (2) students fearful of math and statistics in general.

For the first group of students, it is key to convince them that a grasp of statistics is vital to academic achievement while for the second group the approach should be to lower their anxiety so they can focus on learning. Whilst this study has given us some insight in statistical anxiety, it doesn’t go deep enough to understand the root causes. However, one could argue that statistical anxiety is mainly caused by a perception problem around statistics.

Take a minute to think about this for a second. In which category do you fall (“statistics are not relevant to me” versus “statistics scare me”)? Can you pinpoint a specific event which caused your anxiety? Or is it stemming from a common belief that you picked up from your peers? Do you feel that you lack the proper education?

At the SCU we work with students and staff from all areas across university. Although we may not be across all details in each discipline, we do formulate our advice such that it is relevant to the discipline but above all, can be understood by the researcher. The biggest obstacle we face is that researchers tend to not involve us until they come to the data analysis part of their research. By then, they feel often overwhelmed and lost in the statistics forest. We can assist in all stages of the research process, and the earlier we get involved, the more impact we will have on reducing your statistical anxiety around your research project.

References

Cynthia S.Q. Siew, Marsha J. McCartney, Michael S. Vitevitch (2019). Using network science to understand statistics anxiety among college students. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. doi: 10.10377/stl000133