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Ross Thompson, Postgraduate Research Student

Contact Details

Email: rthompson24@qub.ac.uk

Office Room Number: LG.511

QUB Phone extension: 4558

Year:  3rd

Project Details

First Supervisor: Dr. Judith Wylie

Second Supervisor: Dr. Aidan Feeney

PhD Title: Effects of Attitudes and Anxiety on Performance in Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

Summary of Project: The aim of my research is to explore the various attitudinal factors involved in how undergraduates in a non-mathematical university course deal with the statistical components of their courses. The project started off looking at Psychology students, many of whom live in dread of the statistics module that is essential for passing their course, seeing if their attitudes were significantly related to their performance and in what direction this relationship exists. It will then focus on Nursing and Medical students (courses that require, respectively, lower and higher grades to gain access to, compared with psychology), with whom knowledge of mathematics could have life-or-death consequences in an occupational setting.

Research Cluster: Cognitive

Research Interests

Maths and stats attitudes
Maths and stats anxiety
Factors that affect overall academic performance
Psycholinguistics – particularly the effect that knowing different languages has on cognition
Animal psychology

Conferences

NIBPS 2010
Queen's University Student Conference 2010
NIBPS 2011
Queen's University Student Conference 2011
Have been accepted for Europlat 2012 conference on teaching psychology