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Using psychological testing to make statistics understandable and meaningful: an exploratory study

The use of real data in teaching statistics has been increasingly recommended in statistics education (e.g., Hall, 2011) and, in particular, the need to use data that are of particular interest for students to motivate and engage them in learning (Neumann, Hood & Neumann, 2013). Starting from these assumptions, psychological testing may offer an opportunity to work on real data (i.e., test scores) to teach statistics to psychology students. Indeed, testing relies heavily upon statistical notions that are necessary for transforming and interpreting norm-referenced test scores. In line with previous studies that used students’ scores in high stakes tests to support in- service and pre-service mathematics teachers’ in learning statistics (Confrey & Makar, 2005; Confrey, Makar, & Kazak, 2004), we explored the possibility to improve psychology students’ statistics learning proposing them to conduct data investigations into their own psychological test scores.