Improving Quantitative Abilities and Attitudes in Clinical Psychology Courses: Longitudinal Assessment of a Blended Learning Intervention

Abstract

Background: Many students report negative attitudes toward research methods and statistics (RMS), and these attitudes are associated with impaired performance. Student interest in clinical psychology suggests that clinical courses may provide a promising venue for integrating RMS instruction. This approach may be particularly valuable for students from underrepresented groups in psychology. Objective: We evaluated whether integrating core RMS concepts into undergraduate clinical psychology courses using a blended learning intervention improved students’ quantitative knowledge and attitudes. Exploratory analyses assessed whether the intervention had differential efficacy for students from underrepresented groups. Method: Students completed pre- and post-course assessments of content knowledge, perceived RMS competence, implicit theories of quantitative skills, and statistics anxiety. We compared changes in student outcomes before ( n = 101) and after ( n = 91) implementing the blended learning intervention. Results: Overall, the intervention did not result in greater improvements in content knowledge, perceived RMS competence, or statistics anxiety. However, exploratory analyses suggested that the intervention was more effective for first-generation and racial/ethnic minority students. Change in endorsement of a growth-oriented mindset for quantitative skills was marginally stronger among students in courses implementing the blended learning intervention. Conclusion: These findings suggest that integrating RMS content in clinical psychology courses may confer modest benefits for students’ knowledge and attitudes toward quantitative skills, especially among students from underrepresented groups.

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“…The current review tried to stick to the stream of social sciences. However, most of the included literature regarding BL came from both arts and humanities and social sciences, such as language teaching-learning [34,78], education [29,30], higher education [79,80], teacher education [28], psychology [81,82] and a few other fields [29,30,32,58]. Most of this literature discusses the particular problem or certain efficacy of BL in a certain community or age group [23,83].…”