Work in Progress: Assessing Student Confidence of Introductory Statistics Concepts

Abstract

A goal of concept inventories is to assess students' misconceptions. However, it is often unclear whether students possess an incorrect conceptual framework or are merely guessing. To distinguish between these possibilities, students who completed the statistics concept inventory (SCI) rated confidence in their answers. A positive trend was found between percent correct and mean item confidence across items (r = +0.306, p = 0.031). This study allows comparison with previous research on statistical reasoning skills, with student interviews the next logical step in the process