THE STRUCTURE OF ATTITUDE TOWARD QUANTITATIVE CONCEPTS

The purpose of this study was to assess the dimensionality of attitude toward quantitative concepts. Subjects were 311 graduate students. The instrument employed was a semantic differential consisting of six quantitative concepts and 14 evaluative scales. The concepts were: Algebra, Statistics, Mathematics, Numbers, Calculations, and Formulas. An obliquely rotated principal factor analysis of the data yielded two categories of interpretable factors: (1) factors defined by all scales within one quantitative concept, and (2) factors defined by a sub-set of scales across quantitative concepts.