Diagnosis of mathematical anxiety in master's classes in administration: implications for the teaching of quantitative disciplines

Source abstract

This study investigates mathematical anxiety in 112 master’s students in Business Administration from two federal universities in Rio de Janeiro, with a mean age of around 40 years, using the Abbreviated Scale of Mathematical Anxiety (AMAS). Age has no effect on the scores; higher education of origin does. Students with a qualitative background have substantially higher anxiety than those with a quantitative background (M = 32.77 versus 26.06; p < 0.001; d = -0.88), a stable result under three alternative classification specifications, with d between -0.86 and -0.90. The effect, however, has an unequal impact on the two dimensions of the scale: it is large in Learning Anxiety (d = -0.93) and moderate in Evaluation Anxiety (d = -0.62). The item-by-item analysis makes the asymmetry evident: the five learning items differentiate the groups, against only one of the four evaluation items. The educating trajectory mainly shapes the discomfort with the process of learning mathematics, while the fear of formal evaluation is more transversal to the profiles. The findings support the use of AMAS as a screening instrument in the first school week and indicate that the priority pedagogical intervention focuses on the design of classes and the sequence of contents.