Attitudes towards statistics among business students: Do gender, mathematical skills and personal traits matter?

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to investigate different variables, by combining mathematical skills and personal traits using The Big Five Model, to see which have the most influence on business students' attitudes towards statistics. The Big Five personality traits make up a model for capturing various personal characteristics. Specifically, we aimed to understand why there is a gender difference in attitudes towards statistics. Statistical skills are a key factor for success in business studies. The chosen methods were pairwise comparisons (t-test) and a linear regression model, using a sample from a Norwegian business school. The finding was that there is a substantial gender gap towards attitudes towards statistics but taking mathematical skills and personal characteristics into consideration then results in this gap becoming much smaller. Furthermore, mathematical skills and personal traits were shown to have an impact on students' attitudes towards statistics.