TPC-Journal-V1-Issue2

The Professional Counselor \ Volume 1, Issue 2 101 among females’ and males’ attitudes towards statistics (Araki & Schultz, 1995; Cashin & Elmore, 2005; Harvey, Plake, & Wise, 1985). However, conflictingly, Waters et al. (1988) and Roberts and Saxe (1982) found male students had more positive attitudes towards statistics than female students. According to Perney and Ravid (1991), statistics courses are viewed by most college students as a road block to obtaining their degree. Students often delay taking their statistic courses until the end of their program. Researchers found students’ negative attitudes toward statistics is an influencing factor in low student performance in statistics courses (Araki & Schultz, 1995; Elmore et al., 1993; Harvey et al., 1985; Schulz & Koshino, 1998; Robert & Saxe, 1982; Waters et al., 1988; Wise, 1985). Perceived Social Support Perceived social support is the final independent variable in this study. Perceived social support for this study is defined as the level of support an individual self identifies as received from friends, family, and significant others (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988). This variable is influential in this study in terms of the potential buffering effect it may have on the other independent variables, statistics anxiety and attitude towards statistics. According to Bonilla (1997), social support acts as a buffer to dysfunctional thoughts or attitudes. In 1985, Cohen and Wills investigated the process through which social support has a beneficial effect on well-being. The buffering model maintains that support is related to well-being primarily for persons under stress. Cohen and Wills identified four support resources, which include the following: (a) esteem support such as the person is valued and accepted, (b) informational support, (c) social companionship such as engaging in leisurely activities with others, and (d) instrumental support such as an individual providing a person with financial aid, material resources, or need-based services. Solberg and Villarreal (1997) conducted a study to explore the interactions between social support and physical as well as psychological distress of Latino college students. The authors reported social support moderated the distress. Specifically, the Latino students who believed social support was available had lower psychological distress than students who believed that social support was less accessible. Research Questions Six research questions were included in this study. The first four focus on descriptive information from our sample and include the following: (a) what is the graduate student self-efficacy level, (b) what is the graduate student statistics anxiety level, (c) what is the graduate student attitude toward statistics, and (d) what is the graduate student level of perceived social support? The predominate research question driving this study is, what is the extent of the relationship, if any, between graduate students’ self-efficacy to learn statistics and statistics anxiety, attitude towards statistics, and social support? A supplemental research question was, what is the influence of social support on statistics anxiety and attitude towards statistics? Method Participants Participants were recruited by the researcher emailing faculty members of doctoral and master’s programs within colleges of education at 250 universities within the United States. The faculty members were asked to forward information about the opportunity to participate in the study to their students. One hundred sixty-six graduate students within colleges of education representing 27 states fully completed the online survey within the 8-week data collection timeframe. An a priori power analysis was conducted considering involvement of three predictors in the multiple regression equation and estimating a moderate effect size based on similar studies. It was determined that 119 participants are needed to achieve adequate power in the study (Faul, 2006); thus, an appropriate sample size was achieved to obtain adequate power in the analysis (Gall et al., 2007). The sample was predominately female ( N = 136, 81.9%) compared to males ( N = 30, 18.1%). Participants’ age ranged