Psych Educ, Document ID: PEMJ0, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.

6780428, ISSN 2822-4353

Research Article

Dispositional Antecedents of Statistics Anxiety and Its Influence on

Statistics Performance Among Senior High School Students:
A Structural Equation Modeling

Rhodora M. Aquino*, Freda Kate D. Samuel

For affiliations and correspondence, see the last page.

Abstract
This quantitative study involved 390 senior high school students. Structural equation modeling,
specifically, path analysis was used to answer the research questions. Path analysis was used to
identify the direct and indirect effects among the variables used. The model shows a good fit that
allowed valid interpretation for the structural phase of the study. Results revealed that the students
experienced a low degree of anxiety in statistics. Also, the students were motivated in statistics class
through extrinsic factors. However, they had a fair tendency to procrastinate due to distractions
and set excessively high academic goals. Moreover, due to the pandemic, the students experienced a
high level of stress. Further, the students had high academic achievement in the statistics subject. The
structural equation model indicates that motivated learning strategies can result to lower statistics
anxiety. On the other hand, academic procrastination, perfectionism, and stress due to COVID-19
contributed to anxiety towards statistics. Moreover, statistics anxiety had a significant negative effect
on students' performance in statistics. This model further disclosed that motivated learning strategies,
academic procrastination, and perfectionism, directly and indirectly, affected statistics performance,
with statistics anxiety as a mediator. Furthermore, COVID-19 stress indirectly affected statistics
performance through statistics anxiety.

Keywords: Statistics Anxiety, Motivation, Stress, Perfectionism, Procrastination

Introduction attitudes and anxiety. Studies reported that about 75%

Statistics is an essential tool to gather and translate the
meaning of data into useful information. Learning
statistics can also help equip citizens with necessary
skills like critical thinking and sound decision-making.
Studies reported that learning statistics develop
students' critical thinking (Korres & Tsami, 2010),
problem-solving (Kesici et al., 2011), and technology
skills (Baglin, 2013) which are relevant 21st-century
skills. That is why statistics is a required scholastic
course in education. It equips students with
quantitative skills to complete their research
endeavors, higher statistics courses, and professional
development (Mandap, 2016).
Similarly, the growing need to apply statistical
techniques in various disciplines such as education,
economics, agriculture, and health sciences has
promoted universities to add statistical courses as a
core component in their degree programs
(Onwuegbuzie & Wilson, 2003). Considering
Philippine K-12's curriculum for senior high school,
Statistics and Probability is one of the core subjects -
this means that it is a required subject across all career
tracks or learning strands (Candelario-Aplaon, 2017).
For both higher and basic educational settings in the
Philippines, Statistics serves as one of the core
subjects. However, learning statistics is often
accompanied by emotional factors such as negative
of students experience moderate to high levels of
statistics anxiety (Onwuegbuzie, 1999; Onwuegbuzie
& Wilson, 2003). Furthermore, many students do not
consider Statistics as essential since they lack
quantitative literacy, and they also experience stress
and anxiety towards the subject (Chiesi & Primi,
2010).
Based on the antecedents proposed by Onwuegbuzie
and Wilson (2003), statistics anxiety has three
antecedents: environmental, situational, and
dispositional antecedents. Situational and
environmental factors represent the external factors of
statistics anxiety, including students' prior knowledge
and inherent characteristics like gender and race. The
focused on the dispositional factors considering
statistics anxiety as a behavior. Dispositional
antecedents refer to intrinsic behavior such as
procrastination, perfectionism, motivation, and stress
that could influence anxiety. Specifically, the
dispositional antecedents of statistics anxiety focused
in this study were motivated learning strategies,
academic procrastination, perfectionism, and
COVID-19 stress.
In terms of motivation, studies show that students who
use motivated methods for learning are identified as
self-regulated learners. They were described to be
motivationally and behaviorally involved in the
learning process. Studies also suggest that using

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motivated learning strategies increases students’
academic performance (Camahalan, 2006). Failure to
use such motivated learning strategies may lower
achievement and aggregate anxiety (Kurman, 2006).
On the other hand, academic procrastination refers to
putting off school-related activities that should be done
within a specified time (Jiao et al., 2011). According to
Solomon and Rothblum (1984), academic
procrastination refers to students’ failure to accomplish
school requirements, study for exams, and attend
school activities in general within the required
deadline. Another dispositional antecedent is
perfectionism. Perfectionism is a type of personality
where one tries to be faultless, sets exceedingly higher
academic performance goals, and overly critiques his
or her behavior (Stoeber et al., 2014). Hewitt and Flett
(1991) stated that students who have perfectionism
behavior often feel pressured to achieve very high
academic goals. Finally, COVID-19 stress refers to
students' stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indeed, the quarantine hindered the possibility to
experience university life, impacted academic
studying, and brought anxiety and stress towards
uncertainties related to annulment/delays of activities
and difficulties in employment of online platforms for
distance learning (Lee, 2020).
With these dispositional antecedents of statistics
anxiety, the purpose of the study was to test if these
antecedents would have a significant influence on the
statistics anxiety and statistics performance of senior
high school students, as shown by the paradigm of the
study (Figure 1). Specifically, the study answered
these questions:
1. What is the level of statistics anxiety of the
respondents and their disposition according to the
following antecedents?
a. motivated learning strategies
b. academic procrastination
c. perfectionism
d. COVID-19 stress
2. What is the statistics performance of the
respondents?
3. What is the relationship between and among the
identified variables?
3.1. What are the relationships between the
following exogenous variables to statistics anxiety?
a. motivated learning strategies
b. academic procrastination
c. perfectionism
d. COVID-19 stress
3.2. What is the relationship between statistics
anxiety and statistics performance?
3.3. To what extent does statistics anxiety mediate the
Rhodora M. Aquino
effects of motivated learning strategies, academic
procrastination, perfectionism, and COVID-19 stress
on the statistics performance of students?
Methodology
Research Design
This study used a quantitative research design.
Specifically, a causal research design was used to test
the hypothesized causal relationships depicted in the
paradigm of the study (Figure 1). The goal of causal
research design is to test and to investigate causal
relationships or hypothesized causes of one or more
independent variables and their relationships with one
or multiple dependent variables (Oppewal, 2010).
Thus, this research design was used to test the direct
relationship of motivated learning strategies, academic
procrastination, perfectionism and COVID-19 stress to
statistics anxiety. Furthermore, it was also applied to
estimate the direct influence of statistics anxiety to
statistics performance. Finally, this research design
was used to identify the indirect effects of motivated
learning strategies, academic procrastination,
perfectionism, and COVID-19 stress, which were
dispositional antecedents of statistics anxiety, to
statistics performance. The validity and reliability of
the research instruments used in the study were
checked through a pilot study with 66 Grade 11
students. Cronbach's alpha was used to test the internal
consistency or reliability of the research instruments.
Table 1 presents the reliability coefficients of the
research instruments. The table shows that internal
consistency was established among all the
questionnaires since all the Cronbach's alpha
coefficients are greater than 0.70 (Bland & Altman,
1997). Correlation coefficients were used to test the
validity of all questionnaire items. Ten invalid items
were removed in FMPS to establish the validity of the
research instrument, while all items for SAM, MSLQ,
APS, and CSSQ were retained. The research
instruments were also validated by a psychometrician.
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Table 1. Reliability coefficients for the different

research instruments
different samples from the quasi-population of 390
respondents.

Results and Discussion

Sampling Level of Statistics Anxiety and Disposition as

The respondents of the study were Grade 11 senior
high school students who were enrolled in the subject
Statistics and Probability. From a population of 566
Grade 11 students and a 5% margin of error, a
minimum sample of 230 students was required. This
calculation was based on the normal distribution and
the assumption of having more than 30 samples.
Although, an actual sample of 390 students
participated in the study. This sample size is adequate
for the requirements of SEM analysis (Khine, 2013).
The respondents of the study were chosen through
convenience sampling technique after a parental
consent was secured and allowed the students to
participate in the study. Online forms were used to
gather the needed data from the students.
Data/Statistical Analysis
The data were gathered and analyzed according to the
objectives of the study. Descriptive statistics presented
the students' level of statistics anxiety, motivated
learning strategies, academic procrastination,
perfectionism, COVID-19 stress, and statistics
performance. Statistical Package for Social Sciences
(SPSS) software was used to screen and compute
descriptive values. Further, Analysis of Moment
Structures (AMOS) software was used to perform path
analysis and testing of the structural models. The study
employed the covariance-based structural equation
modeling and a two-stage approach by Anderson and
Gerbing (1988). However, the first stage or the
measurement phase was not included since the study
did not use latent variables. Path analysis was used to
present the second stage, the structural phase, where
direct relationships hypothesized in the study were
tested. In addition, mediation analysis was used to
determine the indirect effect of the exogenous
variables on statistics performance through the
mediation of statistics anxiety. The product of effects
approach by Preacher and Hayes (2008) through
bootstrapping was used. Bootstrapping is more
preferred in testing for mediation because it treats the
sample in the data set as a quasi-population (with
replacement), and the indirect effects are calculated for
this sample. This process was repeated using 2000
Perceived by the Respondents
Along statistics anxiety. The students’ level of
statistics anxiety and its six domains were summarized
in Table 2. Generally, the level of statistics anxiety of
the students is low with an overall mean of 2.23.
Similarly, the students had a low level of statistics
anxiety on the attitude (M=1.92), performance
(M=2.19), fearful behavior (M=2.25), anxiety
(M=2.35), and history and self-concept (M=2.48)
domains. Contrary to these, the expectations (M=2.68)
domain resulted in a high level of statistics anxiety
among the students.
A low level of statistics anxiety suggests that the
students surveyed for the study experience low degree
of anxiety in their Statistics subject. This implies that
the students experience minimal worry or fear when
they are exposed to statistical content and assessments.
In other words, students may feel a little anxious every
time they are in a statistics class and when they answer
statistical tests. Specifically, a low level of statistics
anxiety on the attitude domain means that generally,
the students had a positive attitude on the importance
and worth of learning statistics towards getting a job
and its impact on their lives. Moreover, this implies
that the students understand and appreciate the
application of statistics in their future career and in
their life.
Table 2. Students’ Level of Statistics Anxiety

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Along motivated learning strategies. Students’ level
of motivation in learning a course and degree of
applying self-regulated learning strategies is coined as
motivated learning strategies in the present study.
Results of this dispositional antecedent of statistics
anxiety, including its individual subscales, were
summarized in Table 3. An overall mean of 5.18
indicated that the students had an above average or
moderately high motivation in learning and applying
self-regulated learning strategies. Specifically,
subscales of motivated learning strategies results were
described as moderately high to high levels of
motivation. The extrinsic goal orientation subscale has
the highest mean of 5.93 followed by task value with a
mean of 5.54. Both of these subscales are labeled with
a high level of motivation. On the other hand, intrinsic
goal orientation (M=5.24), effort regulation (M=4.85),
peer learning (M=4.69), and help seeking (M=4.51)
subscales are described with a moderately high level of
motivation. This further implies that the students show
a relevant degree of learning motivation through
various sources, are aware of their learning styles, and
are behaviorally involved in their learning process.
Table 3. Students’ Level of Motivated Learning
Strategies
In terms of the specific subscales, extrinsic goal
orientation was described with a high level of
motivation. This subscale refers to motivation brought
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about by getting a high grade, receiving a reward,
competing against other students, and showing one’s
achievements to peers and relatives. A high extrinsic
goal orientation means that the students’ motivation
highly comes from getting rewards like good grades,
being better than other students in the class, and
recognition from their social connections (Wang &
Holcombe, 2010).
Along academic procrastination. Table 4 outlines the
overall level of academic procrastination of the
students including the six subscales of APS. The scale
measured the general academic procrastination of the
students and not on statistics class specifically. The
overall mean of 2.67 suggests that the students’ level
on this antecedent was close to the lower boundary of
moderate academic procrastination. Specifically, the
subscale of academic procrastination with the highest
mean is on distractions (M=3.18), followed by time
management (M=2.62), social factors (M=2.55),
psychological beliefs regarding abilities (M=2.55) and
laziness (M=2.51). These subscales are all classified as
moderate sources of academic procrastination among
the students. On the other hand, personal initiative
(M=2.48) is classified with low academic
procrastination.
Table 4. Students’ Level of Academic Procrastination
An overall result of moderate academic procrastination
implies that most students procrastinate at a moderate
degree when it comes to doing school tasks or
accomplishing school-related activities. Similarly, an
average level of academic procrastination was
reflected by the distraction subscale. This implies that
students have a fair tendency to avoid school-related
tasks when they are distracted by leisure activities such
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as playing games, watching movies, and the like. In
relation to this, the current pandemic shifted the
students’ learning environment from the four walls of
a classroom to their own homes. Gillick and
Magoulias (2020) pointed out that outside distractions
are omnipresent for online learners and students of
Generations Z and A have been conditioned to have
shorter attention spans due to the rapid cycle of media
consumption. This implies that online learners should
have a conducive learning environment to avoid
learning distractions.
Along perfectionism. Table 5 presents the students’
level of perfectionism and its subscales. Perfectionism
is characterized by the attempt of students to be
faultless, set exceedingly higher academic
performance goals, and overly critiques their behavior
(Stoeber et al., 2014). In general, students sampled in
the study had an average or moderate level of
perfectionism with an overall mean of 3.15. In the
same way, individual subscales which were
excessively high personal standards (M=3.46),
excessive concern with parents’ expectations and
evaluation (M=3.11) and concern over mistakes and
doubts about actions (M=3.07), all resulted to a
moderate level of perfectionism.
Results show that the students generally had a
moderate level of perfectionism. This implies that the
students had medium anticipation of being perfect
according to their personal and parental standards. In
addition, having a moderate degree of perfectionism
means that the students experience fear of mistakes
and doubt about their actions.
Table 5. Students’ Level of Perfectionism
On a lighter note, proponents of the Frost
Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale state that an
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average level of perfectionism is not considered to be a
serious concern for students (Frost et al., 1994).
Setting a standard for one’s actions and goals is a
normal trait of a student but having an extremely high
academic goals that lead to over critiquing and fear of
failure is considered dysfunctional perfectionism or
having a very high level of perfectionism (Stoeber,
1998). Thus, the students generally had an average
level of perfectionism that is useful in setting their
academic goals.
Along COVID-19 stress. Remote learning posed
overwhelming stress among students in developing
countries like the Philippines where resources are a
real problem. Results of the current study for the
students’ level of COVID-19 stress were presented in
Table 6. From an overall mean of 3.62, students were
described with a high COVID-19 stress. Specific
subscales, which were fear of contagion (M=4.14) and
isolation (M=3.95), also reflect a high level of stress
among the students. Meanwhile, the relationships and
academic life (M=3.32) subscale revealed a moderate
level of stress. A high level of COVID-19 stress means
that most of the students were affected by severe stress
brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This
further suggest that the students suffered from
restlessness due to the drastic changes on their
personal and academic life. Specifically, both results
from fear of contagion and isolation subscales revealed
high levels of stress among the students. This implies
that the students suffered from excessive fear of
acquiring the disease and be isolated from their family
and loved ones. On the other hand, a moderate or
average level of stress was described for the
relationships and academic life aspect. This means that
the students experienced a relevant amount of stress
due to the sudden transition to distance learning and
changes they encountered on their social circles.
Table 6. Students’ Level of COVID-19 Stress
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Results of the current study revealed that the students
experience a high level of COVID-19 stress. Similar to
these results, Montano and Acebes (2020) reported
that majority or 60.3% of Filipino students suffered
from moderate to severe COVID-19 stress. Moreover,
correlational analysis revealed that COVID stress is a
predictor of depression, anxiety and stress symptoms
among students. Another study conducted among
nursing students from the Philippines reported that
students were fearful of the COVID-19 virus and it
resulted to high irritability, poor sleep quality, and
desire to quit nursing school (De Los Santos et al.,
2021). This study further implied that teachers should
implement supportive, teaching–learning strategies to
address the students’ needs.
Statistics performance of the respondents. The
endogenous variable in this study is the statistics
performance of students. Table 7 presents the students’
statistics performance or their first term grade in
Statistics and Probability subject. Based on DepEd’s
grade classifications, the general statistics performance
of the students was very satisfactory with a mean of
86.26. This suggests that generally, students sampled
in this study had high academic achievement in their
statistics subject. Based from the frequency and
proportion results, more than half of the students had a
very satisfactory (39.50%) to satisfactory (29.00%)
statistics performance. This reflects that majority of
the students had a high to average academic
performance in statistics. Meanwhile, 24.40% of the
students had an outstanding level of statistics
performance, 7.20% had a fairly satisfactory level, and
0% did not meet the expectation for the subject. A
skewness statistic of 0.16 indicates that distribution of
the data is approximately symmetric. This means that
most of the students’ grades in statistics were equal to
or close to the average grade.
Generally, the statistics performance of the students
was described to be very satisfactory. This implies that
most students manifest adequate statistical knowledge
and skills for a senior high school level. Specifically,
contents from the Statistics and Probability curriculum
included to describe the statistics performance of the
students are random variables, normal distribution,
estimation of parameters and an introduction to
hypothesis testing. Limited studies are conducted to
describe the statistics performance of basic education
students in the Philippines. Retutas and Rubio (2021)
from senior high school students in Region XI,
Mindanao, revealed that there is a significant
difference on the statistics performance of senior high
school students when they are compared according to
type of school (private or public). Results from the
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study suggest that students from private schools had
higher statistics performance than those from public
schools.
Table 7. Students’ Statistics Performance
Relationships among the Observed Variables
This section was allotted for specification of the
structural model, which tested the hypothesized causal
relationships showing how the individual observed
variables related to each other using path analysis. It
discusses whether the multivariate assumptions are
met prior to the testing of the hypotheses. Specifically,
it presents the direct effect of the motivated learning
strategies (MLS), academic procrastination (AP),
perfectionism (PF), COVID-19 stress (CS) to statistics
anxiety (SA) and the direct effect of statistics anxiety
to statistics performance (SP). As well as the indirect
effect of motivated learning strategies, academic
procrastination, perfectionism and COVID-19 stress to
the statistics performance as mediated by statistics
anxiety.
Multivariate assumptions. Before the hypothesized
structural model was tested, important multivariate
assumptions were checked. Results of these tests were
presented in Appendix F. First, Cook’s distances were
plotted against the respondents to identify outlier and
influential. These scatter plots indicate no disturbing
outlier and influential since no point is above 1.00
Cook’s distance (Cook, 1997). Also, multi-collinearity
was explored using the tolerance statistics and
variance inflation factor (VIF) which are all within the
acceptable threshold, that is a tolerance greater than
0.1 and VIF less than 3 (Hair et al., 1995). Finally,
univariate normality was explored using the skewness
(SK) and kurtosis (K) coefficients. Literatures indicate
that variables with SK greater than 3 and K greater
than 2 are extremely non-normal (Kline, 2011). The
six variables in this study had a SK ranging from
-0.537 to 0.032 and K ranging from -0.487 to 0.089,
which indicates that the variables were normally
distributed. For multivariate normality, Mardia’s
coefficient was used and was found to be 1.804 with
critical ratio equal to 1.818. Multivariate non-
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normality would not affect the model in practice unless
critical ratio is 5 or above (Bentler, 2005).
Direct effects. The standardized estimates for the test
of direct relationships were presented in Table 8 and
graphically depicted in Figure 2. These capture the
findings of the tests for hypothesis 1 (H1) and 2 (H2).
As shown in Figure 3, 31% of the variance in statistics
anxiety (R2 = 0.31) can be collectively explained by its
dispositional antecedents. This means that the changes
in the levels of students’ statistics anxiety can be
explained by the students’ levels of motivated learning
strategies, academic procrastination, perfectionism,
and COVID-19 stress by about 31%. Moreover, 27%
of the changes for students’ statistics performance (R2
= 0.27) can be explained by the students’ level of
statistics anxiety. Specifically, the type and strength of
relationship among the variables were presented in
Table 8. Motivated learning strategies was found to
have a significant medium negative effect on statistics
anxiety (β= -0.430, p<0.001). This means that
students who use more motivated learning strategies
experience less statistics anxiety and vice versa.
Meanwhile, academic procrastination (β= 0.159,
p<0.001), perfectionism (β= 0.155, p<0.001), and
COVID-19 stress (β= 0.103, p< 0.05) was found to
have a significant medium positive influence on
statistics anxiety. This suggests that students who had
a higher tendency to procrastinate in doing school
activities can experience more anxiety in statistics
class. Similarly, students who had more perfectionist
behavior were predicted to manifest higher levels of
statistics anxiety. In addition, students who suffer from
extreme levels of stress due to the pandemic had a
tendency to experience a high level of statistics
anxiety. Meanwhile, statistics anxiety was found to
have a significantly large negative effect on statistics
performance (β= -0.519, p< 0.001). This implies that
students who experience high levels of statistics
anxiety can have a low academic performance in
statistics. Conversely, students with no or minimal
habitual anxiousness towards statistics contents and
assessments can have a high statistics performance.
Figure 1. Results of the structural model (direct
effects)
Rhodora M. Aquino
Table 8. Direct Path Analysis
Results of the present study implies that higher
motivation and application of self-regulated learning
strategies can result to lower statistics anxiety among
senior high school students. A negative effect of
motivated learning strategies on statistics anxiety was
also reported by several studies. For example,
Lavasani et al. (2011) showed that academic
motivation has direct negative effect on statistics
anxiety among psychology undergraduate students
through path analysis. A replication of this study by
Ejei et al. (2011) in the same year gained the same
general results among undergraduate students.
Similarly, a canonical correlation analysis conducted
by Kesici et al. (2011) reported that students with who
used more motivated learning strategies had lower
statistics anxiety and more positive attitude to
statistics. Specifically, results of this study suggest that
students who were motivated and developed self-
regulated learning strategies, experienced less anxiety
in statistics.
On the contrary, academic procrastination,
perfectionism, and COVID-19 stress are dispositional
antecedents that had significant positive effect to
statistics anxiety. More precisely, these antecedents
had medium positive effect to statistics anxiety. This
means that these factors could aggregate anxiety of
students in learning or doing statistics. In terms of
academic procrastination, studies predicted that
students who delays academic work in statistics
aggregates their feeling of worry and fear of the
subject (Chew & Dillon, 2014; Onwuegbuzie, 2004).
Likewise, Onwuegbuzie (2000) originally reported that
academic procrastination was significantly positively
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related to the following dimensions of statistics
anxiety: interpretation anxiety, tests class anxiety and
fear of asking for help using canonical correlation
analysis. Similar result was revealed by Macher et al.
(2012) on their study about anxiety of students
enrolled in statistics using structural equation model.
Meanwhile, a study by Mwebesa et al. (2018)
contradicted to these results and reported that
procrastinating does not affect students’ feeling of
anxiety in statistics.
Aside from academic procrastination, a high level of
perfectionism is also reported to aggregate statistics
anxiety. An excessively high expectation towards self,
from family and peers could build pressure to students
thus cause the feeling of fear or worry that later
becomes a habitual behavior or anxiety (Onwuegbuzie
& Daley, 1999). Specifically, these students tended to
have higher levels of statistics anxiety associated with
interpretation anxiety, test and class anxiety,
computational self-concept and fear of asking for help.
Negative perfectionism or excessive concern over
mistakes and doubts about ones’ action were often
associated with statistics anxiety (Comerchero &
Fortugno, 2013). This antecedent therefore, could
cause students to habitually fear taking statistics
assessments and even to learn statistical contents.
COVID-19 stress was described to have a medium
positive effect to statistics anxiety. This implies that
students who suffer from extreme levels of stress due
to the pandemic could also had a tendency to
experience high statistics anxiety. Moreover, studies
show that COVID-19 stress was predicted to cause
depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms among
Filipinos (Montano & Acebes, 2020). Particularly, the
digital divide among Filipino students who are already
under remote learning had to overcome challenges on
a face-to-face learning set-up and face difficulties
associated with remote learning (Simbulan, 2020). A
similar study revealed that this difficulty had a huge
impact on the stress and anxiety levels of the students
(Rotas & Chapay, 2020). With these, results of the
present study show that students also experienced high
levels of stress brought about by the pandemic and it
significantly affected their anxiety levels in their
statistics class.
Finally, results of the present study suggest that
statistics anxiety had a significantly large negative
effect on statistics performance which means that a
higher level of statistics anxiety could result to lower
statistics performance. In other words, a habitual
apprehension towards statistics content and
assessments can negatively affect students’
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performance in statistics. Correspondingly, studies
claim that a low level of statistics anxiety is associated
with high performance in statistics (Macher et al.,
2012; Zahan & Kaswar, 2020). It could be implied that
statistics anxiety is a major factor that could influence
the statistics performance of senior high school
students.
Indirect effects. Table 9 highlights the outcome
mediation analysis and is graphically presented in
Figure 3. In this analysis, the outcome variable is the
statistics performance. The mediator variable is
statistics anxiety and the causal variables are the
mo tivated learnin g strateg ies, academic
procrastination, perfectionism, and COVID-19 stress.
As shown in Figure 4, 28% of the variance in statistics
performance (R2 = 0.28) can be collectively explained
by the intervening variables. Table 9 presents the total,
direct, and indirect effects of the variables in the
structural model (Figure 3).
It could be observed from the table that motivated
learning strategies had a significant positive effect
towards statistics performance (β= 0.258, p<0.001).
This implies that students who use more motivated
learning strategies had higher statistics performance
than those unmotivated students. Although, through
the mediation of statistics anxiety (β= 0.192,
p<0.001), results show that there is a drastic decrease
on the effect of motivated learning strategies to
statistics performance (β= 0.060, p= 0.276). This
suggests that the decreased effect of motivated
learning strategies to statistics performance is mainly
caused by statistics anxiety. It can be implied that
habitual fear and worry in a statistics class lowers the
positive effect of motivation and use of self-regulated
learning strategies to the statistics performance of
students.
Another causal variable in the model is academic
procrastination. It can be observed from the table that
academic procrastination has a significant negative
effect on statistics performance (β= 0.157, p< 0.01).
Through the mediation of statistics anxiety (β=
-0.073, p< 0.001), academic procrastination has no
significant effect to the statistics performance (β=
-0.083, p=0.091) of the students. These results suggest
that the negative effect of academic procrastination to
statistics performance is caused by statistics anxiety.
This means that students’ tendency to procrastinate
leads to low statistics performance due to their habitual
fear towards statistics contents and assessments.
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Research Article
Figure 2. Results of the structural model (indirect
effects)
Table 9. Results of Mediation Analysis
In terms of perfectionism, results from Table 9 show
that perfectionism has a significantly low negative
effect to statistics performance (β= -0.101, p< 0.05).
However, the effect of perfectionism to statistics
performance (β = 0.030, p=0.506) is nullified
through the mediation of statistics anxiety (β= -0.071,
p<0.01). This means that the negative effect of
perfectionism to the statistics performance of the
students is mainly through the mediation of statistics
anxiety. This further implies that high statistics anxiety
causes excessive fear of mistakes and failure that can
cause low statistics performance of students.
Lastly, the table shows that COVID-19 stress has no
significant effect to the statistics performance (β=
0.009, p=0.880) of the students. However,
bootstrapping results reported a significant low effect
of the mediation of statistics anxiety (β= -0.048,
p<0.05) to the increased, but still not significant effect
of COVID-19 stress to statistics performance (β =
0.057, p=0.227) of the students. This means that the
combined effect of COVID-19 stress and statistics
anxiety could have a low negative effect to the
statistics performance of the students. This further
implies that the contribution of statistics anxiety to the
stress of students due to the pandemic could have
small possibility to affect their statistics performance
negatively.
Rhodora M. Aquino
In summary, motivated learning strategies affected
statistics performance through statistics anxiety and
had a significant direct effect on it; thus,
demonstrating that statistics anxiety fully mediates the
relationship between motivated learning strategies and
statistics performance. Also, statistics anxiety was
found to fully mediate the relationship between
academic procrastination and statistics performance,
since the direct path from academic procrastination to
statistics performance was found to be significant.
Additionally, the direct path from perfectionism to
statistics performance was significant; this signifies
that statistics anxiety fully mediates the relationship
between perfectionism and statistics performance.
Further, it could also be observed from the table that
COVID-19 stress affected statistics performance
through statistics anxiety but has no direct effect on it;
thereby shows that statistics anxiety fully mediates the
relationship between COVID-19 stress and statistics
performance.
These findings were consistent with previous
researches such as Macher et al. (2012) who
emphasized the pertinent role of statistics anxiety as a
mediator between statistics performance and learning
behaviors such as motivated learning strategies and
academic procrastination. They also corroborated the
outcome of studies conducted by Walsh and Ugumba-
Agwunobi (2002), which identified statistics anxiety
as a significant mediator between perfectionism and
statistics performance. This is also supported by the
study of Comerchero and Fortugno (2013).
Nonetheless, full mediation of statistics anxiety on
COVID-19 stress and statistics performance supported
the results reported by Steinberger et al. (2021) where
a significant mediation was manifested by an indirect
effect between stress during the COVID-19 pandemic
and academic performance via statistics anxiety. In
relation to this, no significant direct effect of
COVID-19 stress to statistics performance was similar
to the result of a study by Tus (2021). However, results
of the present study suggests that the combined anxiety
experienced by students towards statistics and the
pandemic could have a small possibility to negatively
affect students’ statistics performance.
Model fit. Structural equation modeling was used to
investigate the causal relationships between the
predictor and outcome variables that are hypothesized
in the paradigm of the study. This was done through
the estimation of separate structural models in AMOS
26 to test the direct and mediating relationships.
Before these findings were explored, model fit was
first inspected. Overall, the model shows good fit, with
the given model fit indexes in Table 10. Specifically,
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Research Article
the ratio of chi-square to df is less than 2 and with a p-
value that is greater than 0.05. This implies that the
model fits the data well. In addition, good model fit
was implied by the values of the Comparative Fit
Index (CFI ≥0.95), Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI ≥ 0.95),
Incremental Fit Index (IFI ≥ 0.95), and Root Mean
Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA <
0.06) (Schreiber, 2008).
Table 10. Model Fit Indexes for the Structural Model
Conclusion
Based on the findings of the study, the following
conclusions were derived. There has been no
significant financial support for the work that could
have influenced its outcome.
1. The students experienced a low degree of anxiety in
statistics primarily because of social expectations.
Also, the students were motivated and used self-
regulated learning in statistics class through extrinsic
factors, yet they had a fair tendency to procrastinate
due to distractions and set excessively high academic
goals. Due to the pandemic, the students experienced a
high level of stress.
2. The students had a high academic achievement in
the statistics subject.
3. The structural equation model indicates that
motivation and self-regulated learning strategies could
result to lower statistics anxiety. On the other hand,
procrastination on academic tasks, aim for perfection,
and stress due to COVID-19 could contribute to
anxiety towards statistics. Moreover, statistics anxiety
had a significant negative effect on students’
performance in statistics. This model further disclosed
that motivated learning strategies, academic
procrastination, and perfectionism had a direct and
indirect effect on statistics performance with statistics
anxiety as a mediator. And COVID-19 stress indirectly
affected statistics performance through statistics
anxiety.
As manifested by the conclusions of the study, the
following recommendations are hereby proposed:
1. Igniting prior background of senior high school
Rhodora M. Aquino
students in statistics could increase their interest and
lower their feelings of anxiety about the subject. Thus,
it could be helpful for teachers to have a background
check with regard to students’ prior statistics
knowledge and skills at the beginning of the course.
2. Senior high school students value extrinsic sources
of motivation like rewards, competition, and
recognition of their achievements. With these, it can be
suggested that students be aware of their own learning
progress through constant feedback, are given proper
recognition of their learning success in class, and are
engaged in games throughout the learning process.
3. Distractions on the learning environment can lead
the students to procrastinate. Thus, it is recommended
for the students to have a conducive area for study in
their own homes to have a better learning atmosphere.
4. Students are highly stressed about COVID-19
contagion. Therefore, schools should reinforce
information dissemination about the health protocols
and safety measures to be done to avoid being infected
by the virus. Information dissemination can be done
through webinars, infographics, infomercials, and the
like. Teachers could also integrate COVID-19
information in their lessons or assessments.
5. Statistics anxiety is influenced by its dispositional
antecedents. Therefore, strengthening motivation and
addressing students’ habits of procrastination,
perfectionism, and stress could lower their statistics
anxiety.
5.1. In order to improve students’ motivation, they
should be encouraged to reflect on their own effective
style of learning. Tests could also be administered to
students to help them identify what type of learner
they are and what style of learning is suitable for them.
Every student learns differently and by making them
aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, they
would be more engaged learners and eventually
develop their own self-regulated learning strategies.
5.2. To address students’ habits of procrastination
for distance learning setup, it is recommended that
parents or guardians monitor students’ exposure to
distractions which is the major source of academic
procrastination. Teachers also need to implement a
schedule for school activities to help students manage
their time properly.
5.3. In order to address students’ perfectionism
behavior in class, teachers should create an
environment where mistakes are normalized and are
seen as a part of the learning process. Specifically,
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Research Article
students should be encouraged to practice a certain
statistical skill through various formative assessments
before they are given summative assessments.
5.4. To aid students in managing stress, a
symposium on stress management can be organized by
the school. Students should be taught stress
management techniques such as proper exercise,
enough sleep, mindfulness, smart social media use,
and the like.
6. Students should be aware of the domains and
antecedents of statistics anxiety to improve their
performance in statistics. This can be done through
proper counseling and orientation about anxiety. It is
recommended that students’ orientation can be done at
the beginning of the school year. This orientation can
help students understand not just statistics anxiety but
anxiety as a whole. An understanding and awareness
of one’s mental health can be a first step to dealing and
overcoming anxiety.
7. Future studies could explore on other antecedents of
statistics anxiety and its influence to statistics
performance from beginning to the end of the course.
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Affiliations and Corresponding Information
Corresponding: Rhodora M . Aquino
Email: aquinorhodora13.ra@gmail.com
Rhodora M. Aquino
Saint Mary’s University Senior High School
Philippines
Freda Kate D. Samuel
BSU Open University, Philippines
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