This study compared levels of statistics anxiety and attitude toward statistics for graduate students in on-campus and online statistics courses. The Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics and three subscales of the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale were administered at the beginning and end of graduate level educational statistic courses. Significant effects were observed for two anxiety scales (Interpretation and Test and Class Anxiety) and two attitude scales (Affect and Difficulty). Observed decreases in anxiety and increases in attitudes by online students offer encouragement to faculty that materials and techniques can be used to reduce anxiety and hopefully enhance learning within online statistics courses.

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The Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale was examined using data from a convenience sample of 450 female and 65 male students enrolled in online, graduate-level introductory statistics courses. The mean age of the students was 33.1 (SD = 8.2), and 58.3% had completed six or fewer online courses. The majority of students were enrolled in education or counseling degree programs. Confirmatory factor analysis using unweighted least squares estimation was used to test three proposed models, and alpha coefficients were used to examine the internal consistency. The confirmatory factor analysis results supported the six-factor structure and indicated that proper models should include correlations among the six factors or two second-order factors (anxiety and attitude). Internal consistency estimates ranged from .82 to .95 and were consistent with values reported by previous researchers. The findings suggest that, when measuring statistics anxiety of online students using Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale, researchers and instructors can use scores from the individual subscales or generate two composite scores, anxiety and attitude, instead of a total score.

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