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Validity of the Statistics Anxiety Scale in Psychology Students

Psychology students often perceive the study of statistics and quantitative data as insurmountable obstacles that mobilize considerable anxiety. This research aimed to adapt and generate evidence regarding the validity of the Brazilian version of the Statistics Anxiety Scale with 397 psychology students from public and private universities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The participants' scores were submitted for the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The results demonstrated evidence of factorial validity and internal consistency for the instrument. There were also statistically significant differences in the measures of anxiety between genders of students, between institutions, and between those students who did or did not participate in the discipline of statistics. After comparing these findings with those of previous studies, it was concluded that the scale might be useful for psychological research since it provides insights into the teaching and learning of statistics in psychology.

Anxiety; Statistics; Validity of Tests; Reproducibility of Results


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