Welcome to the home of the Motivational Attitudes in Statistics and Data Science Education Research (MASDER) team. Our goal is to develop a family of validated, theory-based instruments (students, instructor, and environment) for statistics and data science attitudes. These are the Surveys of Motivational Attitudes toward Statistics (SOMAS) or Data Science (SOMADS) and the Environment, Pedagogy, Institution, and Course (EPIC) inventories. There are a total of six instruments being developed:
| Student Instrument | Instructor Instrument | Environment Inventory | |
| Statistics | S-SOMAS | I-SOMAS | EPIC-S |
| Data Science | S-SOMADS | I-SOMADS | EPIC-DS |
Development began first on the S-SOMAS because the area of attitudes toward statistics has a more robust research literature to draw on, and lessons learned from the development of this instrument will inform the development of the others. As of July 2024, all six instruments have been pilot tested, and we are getting ready to finalize the versions for public release. Across the six instruments and all pilot administrations, more than 10,000 people at 50+ institutions have participated in our data collection.
Looking Ahead
Check the News & Updates page for the latest information about the SOMAS/SOMADS instruments and . Data and code produced as part of this project will be hosted on our GitHub page. Right now this site is under construction and the format will likely change as the project grows, but new content is being routinely added! Ultimately, this site will be a central point for:
- Registering for/administering surveys
- Data collected by the project (individual and anonymized)
- Guides for using the SOMAS/SOMADS surveys
- Results (papers, presentations, etc.)
SDSattitudes.com 