Assessing students’ abilities in interpreting the correlation and regression analysis

Abstract

A case study was carried out on students who were being exposed to some theoretical concepts of the correlation and regression topics to investigate their ability to compute and interpret the Pearson’s correlation coefficient and the slope of regression. The findings revealed that a low percentage of students (19.43%) successfully completed their interpretation of correlation coefficient and 33.18% of the students managed to interpret the computed value of regression slope completely. It was also found that the students’ ability to interpret regression slope was significantly associated with the ability to interpret the correlation coefficient correctly. It is hoped that the findings obtained from this study will shed some light on improving teaching practices of statistics educators so as to help students in gaining better understanding on interpreting the correlation and regression analysis.

Keywords: correlation; Pearson; regression; coefficients; interpretation; students’ ability