Psychology students' attitude towards quantitative disciplines as a predictor of statistics anxiety and academic procrastination

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of students' attitude towards learning quantitative disciplines on statistics anxiety and academic procrastination. Participants were 142 graduate students attending a required psychometric course (23.2% male, 76.8% female), with a mean age of 21.5 (SD=4.54). Data were collected administering a 15-item ad hoc questionnaire. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to gather construct validity of the constructing measure. Multiple regression analyses were applied to study what are the relationships between the observed variables. According to our results, the administered scale revealed promising psychometric properties, in terms of structural validity and internal consistency reliability. As expected, false beliefs significantly predict academic procrastination by the mediation of statistic anxiety. Implications for educational interventions aimed at improving achievement are provided.