25th Annual Student Research Conference
Statistics Skills Preferred by Psychology Graduate Programs
Audra M. Schickler* and Jennifer M. Brown
Dr. David B. Conner and Dr. Jeffrey Vittengl, Faculty Mentors
In this study we surveyed North American psychology graduate programs to assess desired statistical skills, familiarity of statistical software packages, and current preparedness of incoming graduate students. A survey link was sent via email to 531 schools with Masters, PhD, PsyD, and EdS programs, encompassing 17 areas of study in psychology, for a total of 235 programs responding. Only 26% of programs reported students enter graduate school prepared to meet the statistical demands of psychology program. Graduate students in most programs use SPSS (94.0%), followed by Excel (49.4%), SAS (31.1%), R (16.6%), and other programs infrequently (e.g., Stata, Systat , Minitab < 10%). Results further indicate that more than 40% of graduate schools expect students to be familiar with using SPSS and Excel (all others < 10%). Familiarity within the areas of data description, basic statistical tests, and ANOVA approaches were most indicated as desirable skill sets by graduate programs.
Keywords: Statistical software, Graduate school preparation, Statistical skills, Undergraduate statistics, Psychology graduate programs
Topic(s):Psychology
Statistics
Education
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: 800-7
Location: Georgian Room - SUB
Time: 3:30