An Exploratory Examination of the Use of Co-Occurrence Network Analysis
to Assess the Anxiety and Beliefs in College Students When Performing
Mathematical Computation
Abstract
This study used used co-occurrence network analysis to study the
experience of college students when solving statistics or algebra
problems. Students generated words to describe their perceptions of
solving a standard deviation problem and a quadratic computation.
Results indicated that the statistics problem was associated with words
indicating “anxiety” and “confusion”. Conversely, words, such as
“relaxed and ”familiar” were used to describe solving the quadratic
computation. Additionally, rating scales measuring statistics anxiety,
math anxiety, and math helplessness, showed that meth anxiety tended to
predict statistics anxiety for all students, above and beyond math
helplessness.