Investigating the Relationship among Test Anxiety, Gender, Academic Achievement and Years of Study: A Case of Iranian EFL University Students

Mohsen Rezazadeh,Mansoor Tavakoli

doi:10.5539/elt.v2n4p68

Abstract

The construct of anxiety plays a major role in one’s life. One of these anxieties is test anxiety or apprehension over academic evaluation. The present study was designed to investigate the relationship between gender, academic achievement, years of study and levels of test anxiety. This investigation is a descriptive analytic study and was done on 110 undergraduate students from University of Isfahan. The Suinn’s Test Anxiety Questionnaire with 48 questions was used to gather the data. For analysis of data correlation coefficient and chi square test were used. The findings revealed that female students have a higher level of test anxiety in contrast to male students. The average of test anxiety score among female students was higher. Also a statistically significant negative correlation was observed between test anxiety and academic achievement. There was no meaningful relationship between test anxiety and years of study.

Highlights

Too much anxiety about a test is commonly referred to as test anxiety
The results show that there is no meaningful relationship between test anxiety and years of study
Findings show that 11.8% of students in our sample suffer from test anxiety

Summary

Introduction

Too much anxiety about a test is commonly referred to as test anxiety. It is perfectly natural to feel some anxiety when preparing for and taking a test. The test-taker qualities consist of (a) topical knowledge, (b) language knowledge, (c) personal trait, (d) strategic competence, and (e) affective schemata. Of these attributes, the former three interact with the latter two. Since our decisions or inferences based on test performance depend on these characteristics, it is very important to know how these components affect test performance. These variables all merit investigation, a central issue seems to be how personal traits influence test performance.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion