The Effect of Enhancing Statistical Skills with an Emphasis on SPSS Software on the Attitude of Social Science Student's Toward Research

This study is a quasi experimental research with the purpose of studying the effect of enhancing statistical skills such as hypothesis testing and output interpretation, using SPSS software, on student's attitude toward research. The population was comprised of all the students of social science at Payam Noor University in Abadan. The attitude of 40 random students who had registered for the course of "computer application for social science" in the first semester of academic year 2009-10 was studied before and after the course. For this purpose, the Attitude Toward Research (ATR) scale was chosen. This scale includes five subscales of usefulness of research, anxiety, positive feelings about research, life relevancy of research, and difficulty of research. Paired sample t-test was used to answer research questions. The results indicated significant increasing positive attitude for usefulness of research, positive feelings about research, life relevancy of research subscales, and total attitude toward research scale, while the attitude was not significantly positive for anxiety and difficulty subscales before and after instruction.