Resumo

INZUNSA CAZARES, Santiago. Students' Levels of Interpretation of Graphics to Communicate Information from Economic and Socio-demographic Contexts. RMIE [online]. 2015, vol.20, n.65, pp.529-555. ISSN 1405-6666.

This article presents the results of a study on graphic understanding among undergraduate and graduate students. The information was compiled from a questionnaire using graphics from official publications with data from economic and sociodemo-graphic contexts. The results show that students' graphic understanding was located fundamentally at the levels of idiosyncratic and basic reading of the SOLO taxonomy. Their interpretations were focused primarily on local aspects of the graphics and they experienced difficulties in relating relevant information and the context. The easiest relations to identify were changes in a variable over time (trends) and group frequencies. Hierarchies of categories, relations of multiplicity of a category with another (ordering and comparing), and predictive aspects (estimation) of the behavior of graphics were the least observed relations.

Palavras-chave : analysis of data; graphics; comprehension; higher education; Mexico.