Confronting Statistical Literacy in the Undergraduate Social Science Curriculum

The American Sociological Association (ASA) has identified scientific literacy (i.e., statistical literacy) as a key curricular goal that needs to pervade the sociology major (Howery and Rodriguez 2006). Research Methods is the core course that addresses statistical literacy, but unfortunately many students possess significant quantitative skill gaps, often accompanied by significant anxieties associated with statistical concepts (Wade 2003). This study has been undertaken to better understand gaps in statistics knowledge among undergraduate students. Participants were 111 students clustered in four coursesstatistics, research methods without a prior statistics course, research methods with a prior statistics course and a control group. Three out of the four knowledge elements revealed significant differences between groups—higher scores were shown for the research methods class with prior statistics, for statistical thinking, reasoning and literacy. For critical questions, a significant difference was found between the research methods class with prior statistics and the statistics class. No significant difference was found between the research methods class with prior statistics, and the research methods class without prior statistics, even though preand post-test scores were higher for the research methods class with prior statistics. These results suggest that undergraduate students need to take both, statistics and research methods classes. Implications of these findings for the sociology curriculum are discussed.