Statistical Anxiety, Obstacle to 21st Century Skills Development

Due to the flow of large amounts of quantitative information from various sources, critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills are becoming increasingly important in everyday life. However, a large part of the population avoids reading and analyzing statistical data from their environment. "Discomfort that occurs when attending a statistical course or performing statistical analysis such as collecting, processing and interpreting data" is defined as statistical anxiety, and is often the result of misperceptions and prejudices about statistics, insufficient mathematical skills and one's own and others' negative experiences from the past. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which statistical anxiety is present among students in Sarajevo Canton, using the partial STARS (Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale) scale. The conclusions drawn from the research results will serve as an argument for the timely introduction of applied statistics at all levels of education, with the aim of developing knowledge and skills necessary for critical and analytical thinking from the earliest ages.