Abstract
Despite extensive statistical training, psychologists’ practical use of statistics and their attitudes toward it remain understudied. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine if components of attitudes toward statistics predicted the use of statistics in psychologists’ work, as well as their suggestions for the improvement of statistical education within psychology programs. From January to March 2024, an online survey was distributed to graduated psychologists (N = 1938) via email using purposive and snowball sampling methods, resulting in 602 total respondents, out of which 406 completed the whole survey. Results revealed that psychologists reported using statistics in only 10% of their working time, primarily for research and data processing, while 20% did not use statistics. The principal suggestions for improving statistical education included incorporating practical applications and user-friendly software. Lastly, the findings indicated that a greater perceived value of statistics was associated with a higher percentage of working time dedicated to statistics use. This study offers insights that can guide the development of educational interventions in psychology programs, potentially leading to better alignment between education and professional practice.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
