Statistics Courses in Psychology Undergraduate Programs: A Review of Canadian Institutions

Statistical literacy is an important learning outcome of an undergraduate psychology degree and a valuable skill as critical consumers of news, as researchers, and as employees in the workforce. The goals of this study were to examine the current curriculum and whether teaching methods used in psychology statistics courses in Canadian universities adhered to recommendations in the GAISE report. Critical evaluation of research, replication/reproducibility, and programming skills were three topics that saw an increase in frequency over time, while hand calculations decreased the most over time. While there is a shift towards including more modern statistics concepts such as confidence intervals, there is little change in the coverage of traditional topics, like calculating t-tests by hand since 2000. The mean GAISE rating across 2017-2021 remained around 7 out of 12 points, indicating considerable room for improvement in methods used to teach statistics. Results, limitations, and future directions are discussed.