Now that the university semesters have started and new journalism students have started their journeys, it is time to review an article that deals with developing numeric confidence and statistical literacy for journalism students. The article is by Eleanor Fallon, Norma Bargary, Fergal Quinn and Ailish Hannigan, all from the University of Limerick. 

The Covid-19 pandemic particularly has highlighted the need for quality reporting on numbers and statistics related to the pandemic. Journalists needed to explain the viral phrases such as “flattening the curve” or “exponential growth”, all the while when government bodies used models on probabilities to inform their decisions on lockdowns and such.

All of this necessitates that journalists also must be able to have numeric literacy to possibly interrogate the claims made by officials and other parties involved in making numeric and statistical claims to better help readers make informed decisions.

This study investigated whether a “an education intervention change journalism students’ subjective numeracy levels and ability to interpret medical statistics”, using the students on a fourth year undergraduate module )‘Media Challenges in the Digital Age’) and a co-taught compulsory master’s module (‘Investigating Current Issues in Irish Journalism’), in 2020/2021.

For the intervention, a team of two statistics academics with expertise in population studies, a journalism academic with experience in the field, and a PhD student of statistics worked together to create an intervention for journalism students. The intervention was a single two hour session in a 12 week course.

The study measured subjective numeracy, ability to interpret medical statistics, and statistical knowledge. The intervention improved mathematical confidence and ability to interpret medical statistics. It also improved the numeracy of the least confident students. Approximately half of the students reported that their self-efficacy improved post-intervention. Not just confidence, but also ability improved. 

However, the authors caution that the results were only with journalism students in Ireland in one university. Also, the authors did not include demographic variables in the analysis, and acknowledged that the university setting was challenging for the study, the students might be motivated to report positive factors, even though the intervention was cut off from the assessment. 

The article “Developing Numeric Confidence and Statistical Literacy to Support Health Risk Communication: A Short Education Intervention for Journalism Students” by Eleanor Fallon, Norma Bargary, Fergal Quinn and Ailish Hannigan is in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator. (Open access). 

Picture: Data reporting dashboard on a laptop screen. By Stephen Dawson.

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