Exploring Motivational Factors in Data Collection Process: A Comparative Study of Two University Programmes

In bachelor’s program, students develop communication and practical skills through group project assessment. The introduction to the statistical course reveals a preference among students for descriptive analysis over regression analysis, indicating less popularity for the latter as a statistical exploration choice. Descriptive analysis utilizes survey data, while regression analysis requires at least two quantitative variables, which are challenging to obtain via survey. Consequently, a compelling approach for gathering quantitative data has been introduced which has gained popularity among students and is now used in other courses. After its adoption, nine out of ten groups chose to explore regression analysis. Thus, this study aims to analyse motivation levels for data collection using this approach and compare them across programme and gender. Two bachelor’s programmes that took a statistical course and conducted a group project assessment were studied. The findings indicate no significant difference in acceptance between the two programmes, and the motivation for collecting the data was high. Our analysis leads us to the conclusion that it is crucial to scrutinize and contemplate students’ behaviour during the data collection process, as we believe that an increase in students’ motivation to learn with authentic data will expose students to the complexities of real data and encourage them to utilize regression analysis for more in-depth insights. Other lecturers at various universities can use the results of this research to enhance the attractiveness of the data collection process in their statistical courses and design effective team-based learning interventions for undergraduate statistics learners.