RELATIONS BETWEEN TEST ANXIETY AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Abstract

Beginning in early childhood, during the entire life, every human being is faced with a num­ber of evaluative situations that involve testing of the entire range of personal characteristics, such as knowledge, abilities, skills, traits, etc. The results of such tests could have serious effects on a person’s life, given the fact that the relevant aspects of the individual’s future (such as education, employment, career development, etc.) often depend on the success of various evaluations. Con­sidering the great importance of the consequences of evaluation, it is clear that the test situations are intense stressors that incite a feeling of anxiety and other unpleasant emotional reactions in majority of people. Individuals, who show an increased tendency to experience an extremely high degree of a subtype of anxiety in the situations of testing, so-called test anxiety, distinguish from the general population. Results of the previous research quite unambiguously indicate regularity, according to which the test anxious individuals are less successful in the activities that involve cognitive engagement, not due to insufficiently developed intellectual abilities, or lack of necessary skills, but due to the disruptive nature of test anxiety. This review paper starts with the scientific definition of the test anxiety phenomenon, and discussion on contemporary conceptualizations of the phenomenon. A special attention is paid to the distinction between cognitive (worry) and af­fective (emotionality) facet of this anxiety subgroup. The first part of the paper briefly presents available empirical knowledge about the measures of success and ways of coping with the test anxiety. The second part of the paper focuses on the analysis of the complex relationship that exists between the test anxiety on one hand, and the academic achievement on the other hand. Taking into consideration that today it could be stated with a great certainty that the test anxiety does not directly cause lower cognitive achievement, there have been described factors that may have a significant role of a mediator or a moderator in this complex relationship. The most studied me­diators are the threat perception, expectations, and causal attributions of (lack of) success, efforts, real and subjectively supposed cognitive resources, and coping strategies. Possible moderator variables which have been analyzed are the following: a level of difficulty of the test questions, an order of the tasks in the test, format of the test questions, presence of humor, an atmosphere during the evaluation, time pressure, presence of an external observer, personality of the interviewer, and a type of feedback.