The Effect of Instruction with SPSS on Students Achievement and Attitude towards Hypothesis Testing: A Case of Zambia Catholic University

The study was conducted to explore the effect of instruction with SPSS on Students achievement and attitude towards hypothesis testing at Zambia Catholic University. The design of the study was a randomized pre-test post-test control group experimental research design. Second year students enrolled in 2017 doing STAT210 (a statistics course offered to second year students) formed the population of this study. The sample was divided into two groups of the same size (i. e. the experimental (24) and control (24)). Before the treatment the two groups were exposed to a pre-test to establish the equivalence and homogeneity of the two groups whereas the post-test was used to assess the effect of the intervention on students achievement and attitude towards hypothesis testing. Data were analyzed with independent samples t-test statistics on hypothesis testing pre-test (HTPreT) and hypothesis testing post-test (HTPT) scores for control and experimental groups. After the intervention, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference in achievement in hypothesis testing post-test (HTPT) in favor of the experimental group. The gender differences were not seen to affect performance of students in hypothesis testing after learning in SPSS environment. Moreover, the study found that experimental students attitude towards learning statistics through technology improved, as well. The researcher concluded that SPSS may be an effective tool for teaching hypothesis testing to students at Colleges and Universities as it was found that the use of SPSS had a positive impact on students performance in hypothesis testing.