Robust regression for estimating the impact of student’s social behaviors on scientific literacy

Abstract

Scientific literacy is a vital program for current generation of students in the whole world. The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact of students’ social behaviors on scientific literacy by using robust regression. A robust approach is applied to overcome the weaknesses of the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model. The method is believed to produce better accuracy of estimation. This study applied a survey method with a total of 200 respondents who participated in this study. The respondents were randomly selected at a university in Indonesia. There were two instruments used, namely questionnaire sheets using a Likert scale and test sheets. There were four dimensions used in this study to measure the students’ social behaviors, which are cooperation (X1), assertiveness (X2), self-control (X3) and pro-social behaviors toward peers (X4). The analysis results revealed that all of independent variables had positive and significant impacts on students’ scientific literacy (Y). Furthermore, the highest impact was collaboration (X1) and the lowest impact was pro-social behavior towards peers (X4), where the robust regression coefficients were .262 and .238, respectively.