University Students' Situational Motivation over a Statistics Course and Relations to Anxiety

We examined the intra- and interindividual variability of students’ motivation (i.e., expectancies, values, and costs) and statistics anxiety, how motivation relates to anxiety within situations, and whether there are differences in these relations between students. We applied an intensive longitudinal design and multilevel structural equation modelling approach in a sample of 154 Finnish university students enrolled in a statistics course. The results showed that anxiety was negatively predicted by expectancies and values, and positively by costs, but that there were significant individual differences in these associations. For example, some students experienced higher anxiety when they had low expectancies, whilst some when they had high expectancies. Furthermore, the results showed that expectancies and values negatively predicted relatively higher anxiety for a particular student. Overall, the findings highlight the particular role of expectancies, values, and costs on statistics anxiety and the variability between individuals across learning situations.