TEST ANXIETY

State, Trait and Relationship with Exam Satisfaction

Introduction

Test anxiety is a combination of physiological over-arousal, tension and somatic symptoms,

along with worry, dread, fear of failure, and catastrophizing, that occur before or during test
situations. It is a physiological condition in which people experience extreme stress, anxiety, and
discomfort during and/or before taking a test. This anxiety creates significant barriers to learning
and performance. Research suggests that high levels of emotional distress have a direct
correlation to reduced academic performance and higher overall student drop-out rates. Test
anxiety can have broader consequences, negatively affecting a student's social, emotional and
behavioral development, as well as their feelings about themselves and school.
Highly test-anxious students score about 12 percentile points below their low anxiety peers Test
anxiety is prevalent amongst the student populations of the world. It has been studied formally
since the early 1950s beginning with researchers George Mandler and Seymour Sarason.
Sarason's brother, Irwin G. Sarason, then contributed to early investigation of test anxiety,
clarifying the relationship between the focused effects of test anxiety, other focused forms of
anxiety, and generalized anxiety.
Test anxiety can also be labeled as anticipatory anxiety, situational anxiety or evaluation anxiety.
Some anxiety is normal and often helpful to stay mentally and physically alert. When one
experiences too much anxiety, however, it can result in emotional or physical distress, difficulty
concentrating, and emotional worry. Inferior performance arises not because of intellectual
problems or poor academic preparation, but because testing situations create a sense of threat for
those experiencing test anxiety; anxiety resulting from the sense of threat then disrupts attention
and memory function. Researchers suggest that between 25 to 40 percent of students experience
test anxiety. Students with disabilities and students in gifted educations classes tend to
experience high rates of test anxiety. Students who experience test anxiety tend to be easily
distracted during a test, experience difficulty with comprehending relatively simple instructions,
and have trouble organizing or recalling relevant information.
It is normal to feel a little nervous and stressed before a test, just like everyone does. And stressed
before a test, just like everyone does. And a touch of nervous anticipation can actually help and keep
you at peak performance while taking examinations. But for some people, this normal anxiety is more
intense. The nervousness they fell before a test can be so strong that it influence with their
concentration or performance in examination and becomes a huge problem for student in this situation.

2. Significance of the study

The conduct of the study provide a deeper understanding and to address about the nature of test
anxiety to all students and to introduce self-regulation as a way to overcome and eliminate anxious on
examination. The result of the study will help the instructors and guidance counselor to make programs
and seminars or forums on test taking strategy and effective study skills by reducing the test anxiety.
3. STATEMENT of the problem
This study aimed to determine the level of test anxiety among students of the college of artss
and science, university of northern Philippines, enrolled during the 1st semester of school year 20142015.

Specifically, the study sought to answer the following:

1. What is the profile of the respondents in terms of the following:
a. Sex,
b. Age,
c. Course,
d. Year level,
e. Family income,
f. Difficult subject,
g. Residence while studying, and
h. Frequency of studying?
2. What is the level of self-regulation of the respondents along;
a. Receiving
b. Evaluating
c. Triggering
d. Searching
e. Formulating
f. Implementing, and
g. Assessing?
3. What is the level of test anxiety of the respondents?
4. Is there a significant relationship between the level of test anxiety and profile of the
respondent?
5. Is there a significant relationship between the level of test anxiety and the level of
self-regulation of the respondents?

4. METHODLOGY
This part presents the research design, population and sample, and data gathering procedure
and the statistical tool used in the interpretation of the gathered data.
a. Population and sample.
The respondents of the study were the students of the college of arts and science, University of
northern Philippines enrolled during the first semester of school year 2012-2013. Stratified random
sampling together with the formula n=n/1+ (Ne2) were used by the researcher to determine the
respondents of the study. The distribution of the respondents is presented in table1.0.

COURSES
AB Mass communication
AB Political Science
BS tourism
BS Biology
BS Environmental sciences
BS Mathematics
BS physics
BS Psychology
TOTAL

Distribution of the respondents

MALE
FEMALE
N
n
N
n
21
10
57
27
32
15
52
25
39
18
103
50
10
5
28
13
9
4
13
6
17
8
8
4
8
4
6
3
10
5
28
13
146
69
295
141
Table1.0

N
78
84
142
38
22
25
14
38
440

TOTAL

n
37
40
68
18
10
12
7
18
210

b. Data gathering procedure.

The researcher first asked permission from the dean of the college of arts and sciences to
administer the questionnaire. The researcher also sought permission from the instructors concerned.
Subsequently, the researcher personally administered and retrieved the questionnaire. Confidentiality
of the identity of the respondents was observed.
A questionnaire was used in this as data gathering instrument for gathering data needed for the
study.
Part I of the questionnaire determined the profile of the respondents which included the sex,
age, course, year level, family income, difficult subject, residence while studying and frequency of
studying.
The self-regulation questionnaire is divided into subscales along receiving, evaluating, triggering,
searching, formulating, implementing and assessing. All 63 items were answered on a 5-point Likert scale
with following scale points:
Range

Items Description

4.50-5.0

strongly agree

Overall Description
Very High

3.50-4.49
2.50-3.49
1.50-2.49

Agree
uncertain or unsure
Disagree

High
moderate
low

1.00- 1.49
Strongly Disagree
Very Low
Part III determined the level of test anxiety of the respondents.
Test Anxiety questionnaire by Driscoll (2004) was adopted and the range for interpretation are
as follows:
Range
4.50-5.0
3.50-4.49
2.50- 3.49
1.50-2.49
1.00- 1.49

items description
Extremely Always True
Highly usually True
Moderately sometimes True
slightly seldom true
Not at all true

overall description
Extremely High
High
Moderate
Low
Extremely low.

III. STATISTICAL TREAMENT OF DATA

The study used the following statistical tools:
1. Frequency and percentage to determine the profile of the respondents;
2. Mean to measure the level of the respondents test anxiety and self-regulation;
3. Simple correlational analysis to determine the significant relationship between
the level of test anxiety, self-regulation and the profile of the respondents.