REDUCING STATISTICS ANXIETY AND ENHANCING STATISTICS LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT: EFFECTIVENESS OF A ONE-MINUTE STRATEGY

Statistical knowledge is widely used in academia; however, statistics teachers struggle with the issue of how to reduce students' statistics anxiety and enhance students' statistics learning. This study assesses the effectiveness of a one-minute paper strategy in reducing students' statistics-related anxiety and in improving students' statistics-related achievement. Participants were 77 undergraduates from two classes enrolled in applied statistics courses. An experiment was implemented according to a pretest/posttest comparison group design. The quasi-experimental design showed that the one-minute paper strategy significantly reduced students' statistics anxiety and improved students' statistics learning achievement. The strategy was a better instructional tool than the textbook exercise for reducing students' statistics anxiety and improving students' statistics achievement.