Teaching statistics to psychology students: Two strategies to overcome some limitations

Abstract

Psychostatistics is a subject that is taught in the first year of the Psychology degree at the National University of Córdoba. The main difficulties that our students encounter are: understanding the usefulness of statistics in the profession and achieving an appropriation of the concepts and procedures that allow their application in subjects of subsequent courses, such as Psychometric Techniques and Research Methodology. To face these difficulties, two strategies are developed, the first is mandatory and consists of using real data to apply the techniques that are covered throughout the subject. The second is an optional "game", a competition in which problems are presented whose resolution leads to points. In this work we compare the results of the second partial exam between students who participated and did not participate in the optional activity. In order to homogenize the groups, the Propensity Score Matching technique is used.