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A sample of 278 students enrolled in an introductory statistics course was used to determine which of a set of cognitive and affective variables correlates with course performance. Measures of state anxiety, mathematics achievement, previous mathematics experience, expectations, and attitudes were found to be significantly related to course outcome. Other variables such as age, academic major, year in school, reason for taking the course, and general anxiety appeared to be unrelated to student success or failure. It is suggested that individual diagnostic profiles may be developed which may be useful in establishing prescriptive treatments specifically designed to help students who are likely to experience difficulty in statistics.
Feinberg et al. (Thu,) studied this question.