A Survey on How College Students in a Statistical Literacy Course Apply Statistics Terms to People

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© 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Table 1 Rates at which students deemed phrases valid.

Items 3, 2, 1, 8, respectively	students say phrase is valid	students say phrase is invalid	mixed
Outlier person (n = 73)	69 (94.5%)	3 (4.1%)	1 (1.4%)
Random person (n = 72)	67 (93.1%)	5 (7.0 %)	0 (0.0%)
Average person (n = 71)	41 (57.7%)	22 (31.0%)	8 (11.3%)
Average pedestrian (n = 72)	15 (20.8%)	55 (76.4%)	2 (2.8%)

(there were four missing responses, as noted in Section 2.2).

Fig. 1 Phrase(s) for Items 1–3 the n = 73 students found valid.

Table 2 Rates of student approval (n = 73) for Items 9 and 10 statements related to random.

Item 9 Statement	Student approval %	Item 10 Statement	Student approval %
“We surveyed 10 randomly selected people.”	27.4%	“Conference attendees put their business cards in a bag and then someone reached in to pick one at random to pick the door prize winner.”	83.6%
“We randomly surveyed 10 people.”	47.9%	“It was a random act of violence– the shooter did not know any of his victims.”	37.0%
“We surveyed 10 random people.”	61.6%	“While at a party, I ran into someone wearing a rainbow-colored zebra costume – it was so random!”	19.2%

Each item’s statements are listed in decreasing order of researcher-rated “correctness”.

Table 3 Rated validity of average person versus phrases approved in Item 7.

“average person” (Item 1) viewed as valid?	Statements from Item 7 deemed valid?
	“The average worker salary…”	“On average, a worker…”	“The salary of the average worker….”
yes	21	21	25
no	9	20	9
mixed	3	5	4

Table 4 Response rates (n = 73) by answer choices of Items 4, 5, and 6.

Choice	…family has 2.1 children…(Item 4)	…person has 10 fingers…(Item 5)	…household earns $70,000/year…(Item 6)
The mean	64.4%	37.0%	43.8%
The median	15.1%	5.5%	20.5%
The mode	6.8%	28.8%	15.1%
More than 1	13.7%	21.9%	19.2%
of the above
None of the above	0.0%	6.9%	1.4 %

Table 5 Association (n = 56) between average pedestrian and average person phrases.

		average person valid? (Item 1)
		yes	no
average pedestrian	yes	8	4
valid? (Item 8)	no	26	18

Table 6 Rates of student approval (n = 73) for Item 11 related to anonymous.

Statement (in decreasing order of researcher-rated “correctness”)	Student approval %
(1) “We conducted an anonymous survey of 10 students.”	74.0%
(2) “We conducted a survey of 10 anonymous students.”	49.3%
(3) “We anonymously conducted a survey of 10 students.”	30.1%

Table 7 Agreement between coders.

		Pre-discussion, but including half-credits for….
Survey Item # (phrase)	Pre-discussion (excluding partial credit)	“extra code” instances	“extra code” and “train-of-thought” instances	Post-discussion
2 (random person)	79.7% (n = 79)	82.9% (n = 76)	86.9% (n = 72.5)	98.6% (n = 77)
8 (average pedestrian)	75.3% (n = 85)	78.0% (n = 82)	79.0% (n = 81)	100.0% (n = 84)
1 (average person)	61.0% (n = 100)	68.5% (n = 89)	72.6% (n = 84)	98.9% (n = 94)
3 (outlier person)	45.9% (n = 85)	49.1% (n = 79.5)	55.7% (n = 70)	100.0% (n = 78)

n denotes number of opportunities for agreement for that cell.