The Surprising Truth About Attitudes of Tourism Students Toward Statistics

The study investigates the influence of various components on tourism students’ attitudes toward statistics, and the causal relationship between these components. A total of 435 students were asked to fill out a questionnaire on the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS). The main data analysis in this study uses exploratory factor analysis (EFA) or principal component analysis (PCA) to look for interdependence relationships between variables in order to identify the dimensions or factors that shape attitudes. Our results show that students’ attitudes toward statistics before and after the learning process tend to be positive, where attitudes toward statistics before learning for each group of student backgrounds show a linear relationship with attitudes toward statistics after learning, except for groups based on work experience. The results of the study also show that the original 4-factor structure, namely, cognitive, affective, difficulty, and value, according to conditions in Indonesia, especially for tourism students, produces four components, namely, value, affect, interest, and difficulty components. For stakeholders, the results of this study have broad implications for the development of a tourism education curriculum, as tourism students increasingly need to be given statistical literacy skills.