An exploratory study on developing an affective traits scale related to basic statistics (general education) learning for humanities and social sciences undergraduates

Despite the rapid expansion of basic statistics (general education) courses across universities, systematic pedagogical research and practical discussions to support such courses remain limited.In particular, students in the humanities and social sciences tend to perceive statistics as an academic obstacle.Based on this concern, the present study aimed to explore psychological and behavioral factors that may influence the academic achievement of humanities and social science students taking basic statistics (general education), and to generate preliminary data for the potential development of a shortened scale for university students.To this end, four psychological variables-achievement goals, self-regulated efficacy, test anxiety, and academic stress coping-were measured, and their interrelationships were analyzed.The results indicated that achievement goals showed significant positive correlations with self-regulated efficacy and academic stress coping, whereas test anxiety did not exhibit statistically significant relationships with the other variables.In addition, correlation analyses between academic achievement and individual items of each variable were conducted to identify preliminary core items in the domains of achievement goals, self-regulated efficacy, test anxiety, and academic stress coping.This study provides foundational data for the development of a shortened scale for university students and the design of educational interventions, and it also offers implications into the teaching of basic statistics (general education) in the humanities and social sciences.