Current instruments for assessing university students’ statistics anxiety prevailingly emphasize the affective construct component. In order to unfold the construct in a more exhaustive and differentiated manner, a scale for measuring university students’ worry, avoidance, and emotionality cognitions was developed. In two samples of education science majors the present pilot study aimed at analyzing the scale’s psychometric properties and at gaining preliminary validation results. Principal component analyses led to the formation of a unidimensional scale which appeared to be sufficiently reliable. Its relations to domain-specific self-belief and background variables turned out as theoretically expected – thus, for the time being the scale should claim criterion validity.

We outline the use and evaluation of a video presentation about variance and covariance developed to motivate students to process the topics and to enhance their skills. We outline the structure and the content of the video presentation and present data of an evaluation study. Students in different subjects who must pass statistics courses (N = 114) participated in an online survey with randomized controlled design and repeated measurement. Results indicate that students who watched the video presentation significantly improved on their skills, compared to a control group reading a textbook section about the same topics. The video presentation was judged as more satisfying and useful for learning than the text. We discuss application scenarios and further teaching implications. Ideally a longitudinal study should investigate effects of continuous learning with video presentations, changes in motivation, anxiety, and attitudes as well as effects for students of different subjects.