Comparisons of Test Anxiety Level of Senior Secondary School Students across Gender, Year of Study, School Type and Parental Educational Background

Abstract

Test anxiety has been noted to be a common experience among students and has been found to have a debilitating effect on academic performance and general well-being of affected people. Despite the universality of the experience, the manifestation of test anxiety varies across some psychosocial and demographic variables. Based on this assumption, this study examined the variation in test anxiety level of senior secondary school students across gender, year of study, school type and parental educational background. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Three hundred and sixty two (362) students from selected senior secondary schools in Ogbomoso area of Oyo State, Nigeria participated in the study. Sarason Test Anxiety Scale (r= 0.87) was employed to generate data for the study. t-Test was the statistical tool used for the analysis of data. Out of the four hypotheses formulated, only one was confirmed. Specifically, no statistical significant difference was observed in the test anxiety scores of participants based on year of study. However, significant differences occur in test anxiety scores of participants across gender, school type and parental educational background with female, public school, and low parental educational background students scoring higher in the measure of test anxiety. The outcomes of the study were discussed and it was suggested that stakeholders in education should design means through which test anxiety would be reduced among students across the examined variables.

Keywords: Test Anxiety, Gender, Year of Study, School Type, Parental Educational Background