Relationship Between Leisure Activities, Stress Management Methods, Study Methods, and Methods of Learning New Things Among First-Year Statistics Students

TL;DR

This study explores how leisure activities, stress management, study methods, and learning approaches interrelate among first-year statistics students, revealing passive learning tendencies and minimal strong correlations across dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces a cluster-based analysis of students' responses across four behavioral dimensions, highlighting patterns and relationships to inform tailored educational strategies.

Findings

Listening to music or lectures is a common activity.

Students tend to be passive learners and introverted.

No strong relationships found between the four dimensions.

Abstract

The interplay between leisure activities, stress management methods, studying methods, and methods of learning new things is crucial and affects performance in all aspects of life. On the other hand, data science and statistics are rapidly growing fields with high demands across universities. Thus, this study aimed to identify the similarities and dissimilarities between the four dimensions: leisure activities, stress management methods, studying methods and methods of learning new things. The participants of this study were first-year undergraduates studying statistics at one of the universities in Sri Lanka. There were 117 students in the sample (female-65, male-52). A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data. First, individual responses for each question under each dimension were visualized using tile maps separately for males and females to identify similarities and dissimilarities in responses. Next, individuals were clustered based on the responses for each dimension separately. Finally, all resulting clusters were re-clustered to identify the relationships between the dimensions. In all cluster analyses, we used Jaccard distance with hierarchical clustering using the complete linkage method. The results were visualized using tile maps. Across all four dimensions we considered, the top activities were either listening to music or lectures and watching videos or TV shows, suggesting that individuals are introverts and passive learners. There was no strong relationship between these dimensions. By identifying these clusters and relationships, educators can tailor instructional approaches to enhance engagement and effectiveness in diverse learning environments.