Abstract
Anxiety about mathematics can have detrimental effects on performance and understanding, yet little research has investigated how math anxiety is related to other types of anxiety. Here we develop the Academic Anxiety Inventory (AAI), an efficient and valid self-report measure designed to test math anxiety, as well as differentiate anxiety associated with mathematics from other contributions of anxiety across various academic domains. In Study 1, we isolated items that independently measure each domain of anxiety, reducing the overlapping variance between math anxiety and other constructs, and determining which components can or cannot be differentiated. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate that the AAI is consistent and reliable for undergraduate and adolescent populations. In Study 3, anxiety-related performance deficits in a high school math class were associated with scores the AAI-Math subscale. In Study 4, the AAI-Math subscale was associated with perceptions of increased mathematical complexity, decreased estimations of accuracy, and increased negative emotion when participants viewed mathematical expressions. Across four studies, we demonstrate the AAI is a reliable and valid measure of math anxiety and other domains of academic anxiety, providing an efficient questionnaire to determine areas in which students may require extra support in order to reach their full potential.
Highlights
Whereas some students flourish in stressful academic environments, many other students struggle to learn each day while dealing with various forms of anxiety
In Study 1, we sought to explore the commonly-used measures of math, science, and writing anxiety, illustrating the relationships between these domains and their association with test anxiety and trait anxiety. While many of these domains of academic anxiety have a high degree of overlap, our goal in this analysis was to examine the current measures of these domains of anxiety as they relate to math anxiety, identify the overlap in these questionnaires, and isolate independent aspects of math, science, writing, test, and trait anxiety, in order to more accurately assess each as a unique construct and to separate these components from math anxiety
We demonstrate that the Academic Anxiety Inventory (AAI), a self-report measure developed to measure anxiety in math, as well as contributions of anxiety associated with science, writing, test, and trait domains is a reliable and valid measure of these constructs across a wide population
Summary
Whereas some students flourish in stressful academic environments, many other students struggle to learn each day while dealing with various forms of anxiety. This anxiety has detrimental influences on learning and can take several forms, including anxiety associated with specific topics of study, such as mathematics, or debilitating feelings of pressure induced by testing (Alpert and Haber, 1960; Hembree, 1990). We take a data-driven approach to developing a short but useful self-report measure that separates the relevant dimension of math anxiety from other domains of academic and general anxiety. The following sections describe how we conceptualize math anxiety and our present approach to developing this new measure
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