The Learning Experiences of Postgraduate Students in Statistics: A Case Study of a Ghanaian University

Abstract

Statistics is a compulsory course for almost all postgraduate students in the universities due to its importance to their research works. The purpose of acquiring this statistical knowledge is to enable students answer research questions carefully based on the use of appropriate methodology. It has been indicated that most postgraduate students seem to have issues dealing with statistics as a course and that anxiety seems to be one of the causes. This necessitated an investigation into MPhil postgraduate students’ level of anxiety in statistics in order to positively influence instructional discourse. To guide the study, two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated. The research design used was sequential explanatory-mixed method design. The census-purposive sampling technique was used to obtain the respondents and participants for the study. The census involved 151 MPhil postgraduate students from a college in a Ghanaian university as respondents in the quantitative phase of the study and the purposive sampling technique had twelve participants based on the quantitative findings for the focus group discussion. The major findings were: postgraduate MPhil students of the university experienced anxiety in statistics; the level of the postgraduate MPhil students’ anxiety in statistics was mostly mild and the level of postgraduate students’ anxiety in statistics was related to the sex of the student and the programme they pursued. It was recommended that teachers of statistics should employ positive immediacies in the statistics classroom.