Application of the Rasch rating scale model with mathematics anxiety rating scale-short version (MARS-SV)

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the relationship between students’ mathematics anxiety and their mathematics achievement by applying the Rasch Rating Scale Model to investigate whether mathematics anxiety is debilitative or facilitative for their mathematics achievements. For data analysis, the study employed the Rasch Rating Scale Model on an instrument called Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS-SV) and examined the differences between the students’ MARS-SV mean scores and the applied Rasch measures. The study was carried out with 79 ninth grade students from different classes in a private high school, Ankara. In the first phase, these students’ school exam marks were obtained. MARS-SV was administrated to the 79 students and then descriptive analyses applied to MARS-SV data. The correlation between the students’ mean scores on the MARS-SV and school exam marks was computed. In the second phase, the Rasch Rating Scale Model was applied to the MARS-SV raw scores to give Rasch measures for mathematics anxiety. The correlation between these Rasch measures and the students’ mathematics school exam marks was computed. Also a descriptive analysis was applied to the Rasch measures.It was found that there were moderate negative correlations between students’ mathematics exam marks and the two types of anxiety measured by the student mean scores (r = -0.40) and the Rasch measures (r = -0.45). The finding indicated that the mathematics anxiety was debilitative for students. In conclusion, the Rasch analysis provided the more reliable measure of student anxiety, which approaches more to the normal distribution. In addition, it provides a practical conversion table from a raw score of anxiety to its counterpart Rasch measure.