Test Anxiety Profile

Test Anxiety Profile

Test Anxiety Profile

Introduction

A widely accepted definition proposed by Spielberger (e.g. 1980) construes test anxiety as a situation-specific personality trait. 'Test anxiety' may also refer to stressful evaluative stimuli and contexts, and fluctuating anxiety states experienced in a test situation. In general, trait test anxiety and evaluative situations may be seen as interacting to provoke states of anxiety (Sarason et al., 1995). 'Test anxiety' refers to the set of phenomenological, physiological, and behavioural responses that accompany concern about possible negative consequences or failure on an examination or similar evaluative situation (Zeidner, 1998). 'Test anxious' students are characterized by a particularly low response threshold for anxiety in evaluative situations, tending to view test situations as personally threatening. They tend to react with extensive worry, mental disorganization, tension, and physiological arousal when exposed to evaluative situations (Spielberger & Vagg, 1995). Test anxiety is often accompanied by maladaptive cognitions such as threat perceptions, feelings of reduced self-efficacy, anticipatory failure attributions, and coping through self-criticism (e.g. Matthews et al., 1999).

What to Measure: Conceptualization and Dimensionality

Lack of precision in defining and observing inner constructs such as test anxiety can lead to serious problems in assessment. Although some early questionnaires were unidi-mensional, most contemporary researchers accept the distinction made by Liebert and Morris (1967) between Worry and Emotionality as major components of test anxiety. Worry refers to cognitive concerns about the level of performance, failure, and comparison with others, whereas Emotionality refers to feelings of tension and self-perceived physiological arousal. Debate continues on the dimensionality of test anxiety, and so contemporary questionnaires differ somewhat with respect to their number of scales. An initial conceptualization of test anxiety is essential in order to guide the development of the item pool, and facilitate the initial construct validity research. As a hypothetical construct, test anxiety may be inferred by measuring cognitive (e.g. self-focused thoughts and worries), affective (e.g. subjective tension), or behavioural (e.g. escape behaviour) indices.

Item Selection and Scale Construction

Test anxiety self-report scales are also plagued by a number of conventional threats to validity, including response biases such as acquiescence and social desirability, defensiveness and repression of test anxiety, and deliberate faking. Thus, attention to possible biases and careful statistical analysis of test anxiety scales is essential. Most scales have been constructed using exploratory factor analytic techniques. Confirmatory factor analysis was used early in the 1980s in test anxiety research to test the adequacy of the indicator-factor relationship in the measurement model of test anxiety scales and has also recently been employed for purposes of item analysis and selection. The new latent trait theory methods of scaling have rarely been used in scale development, but they have considerable promise for scaling of test anxiety items in the years to come. It is important to begin assessment with well-written items, and awareness of how item format may influence their measurement properties. Over the years, a wide array of item formats have been employed; currently, Likert scales are the most ...