A Framework and Survey for Measuring Students’ Motivational Attitudes toward Statistics

The Survey of Motivational Attitudes toward Statistics (SOMAS) for Students is part of a family of instruments designed to assess attitudes toward statistics. In the SOMAS project, attitudes toward statistics are conceptualized broadly, and the instruments are designed drawing from Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) (Eccles, 1983). In this way, the SOMAS project aims to build upon and extend the work of other attitude measures, e.g. the SATS-36. This paper describes the EVT model for students' motivational attitudes, the constructs to be assessed by the student SOMAS instrument, and future directions for the project.