Gender differences in test anxiety and self-efficacy: why instructors should emphasize low-stakes formative assessments in physics courses

Abstract

Many prior studies have investigated female and male students’ self-efficacy (SE) in physics courses. However, test anxiety (TA) is rarely studied in the physics context, despite prior work suggesting it may play a detrimental role in the development of SE. In this study, we explore the relationships between SE, TA, and gender differences in introductory calculus-based physics performance. Although there has been research that uses TA and SE to predict student grades, no study to our knowledge has investigated this in the context of low- (e.g., homework and quizzes) and high-stakes (e.g., traditional exams) physics assessments. Using validated survey data and grade information, we compared the predictive power of SE and TA on student performance on a variety of assessment types. We found that there are gender differences in both SE and TA, as well as in high-stakes assessment outcomes. There were no gender differences in low-stakes assessment scores. Further, we found that models that control for SE and/or TA eliminate the predictive power of gender for high-stakes assessment outcomes. Finally, we found that SE partially mediates the effect of TA on high-stakes assessment outcomes. From these results, we make several suggestions for instructors that may alleviate the adverse effects of TA and make physics assessments more equitable and inclusive.