Learning of quantitative research methods - university students' views, motivation, and difficulties in learning.

The aim of this dissertation was to study the difficulties that some students of education, psychology and social science experience in their quantitative research courses at university. The problem is approached from the perspectives of anxiety studies, studies on conceptions and beliefs, orientations in learning situations and theories of conceptual change. Together, these five studies showed that students' difficulties experienced in quantitative methods, courses, research orientations and motivational factors, do constitute an interconnected web that may also have implications for content learning and to students' views of the importance of research skills for their future work.