Much has been written about methods of teaching statistics and about how to assess students' knowledge of statistics, but almost nothing on the extent to which assessment procedures measure whether students understand statistical concepts, or whether they understand what is involved in the application of statistical techniques. There has in fact been very little research on the development of instruments designed specifically to measure statistical understanding. There is, however, work in related areas which has some bearing on the assessment of understanding of statistical concepts. In reviewing this work this paper discusses the extent to which understanding is covered by some classification schemes which have been developed for use in mathematics and looks at ways in which attitude scales investigate understanding. Some alternatives to traditional methods of examining brought about by changes in the method of teaching are also considered.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education