Tourism Students' Attitudes towards Statistics

Abstract

[eng] Since tourism entered in higher education, statistical skills have frequently been included in tourism curricula, with due recognition of their importance in student training. But apart from acknowledgement of that fact, the motivation of this paper was the conviction that tourism students need to have statistical literacy; this is understood not only as the acquisition of knowledge about tools of statistical analysis, but as the development of statistical reasoning, since that is relevant for the students' career. However, the majority of tourism students do not have strong mathematical training, and they do not show an inclination for quantitative methods. In this context, attitudes are crucial for the learning process. Negative attitudes towards a subject of study can often become an obstacle to effective learning, and there is a common belief that attitudes towards Statistics are negative. This paper focuses on evaluating the attitudes of university students enrolled in Tourism management studies, using a self-administered survey to students of the Degree in Tourism at the University of the Balearic Islands. To our knowledge, there are no other studies of this type related to this university major, despite the importance of acquiring statistical skills for tourism professionals. The survey instrument includes the Survey of Attitudes towards Statistics (SATS©), along with some questions regarding demographic and academic characteristics of the respondents. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) has been conducted on the SATS© items, seeking to identify the underlying dimensions of tourism students' attitudes towards Statistics. The relationship between attitudinal components and the demographic and academic characteristics of students has also been investigated. From the results, recommendations emerge for teaching and learning, as well as for the improvement of attitudes towards Statistics in Tourism studies in particular, and in Social Science degrees in general.