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Introduction Test anxiety is a multidimensional construct that has been defined as the set of phenomenological, physiological, and behavioral responses that accompany concern about possible negative consequences or failure on an exam or similar evaluation. The research study question is, “Do males and females significantly differ on their level of test anxiety? The topic is a significant problem to students as well as counselors as they endeavor to alleviate the causes of anxiety attacks (gender has been identified as a cause of high test anxiety) during an evaluative situation whose effects are dire to the reduction of GAP on every level of education and academic achievement.
According to Fire (2003), students suffer lower academic achievements due to high test anxiety (worry and emotionality components are intense) bearing in mind that certain types of subjects or disciplines pose greater anxiety levels than others. The main goal for this study is to compare test anxiety responses between males and females among the 41 participants of SUN. Age range for females is 21 to 50 and males have 22 to 27. It is clear that female students have a higher (SD= 6. ) than male students with (SDвЂ?I . ). The skewed age distribution seems to destabilize the results and serves as a valid explanation for either the lower or higher anxiety levels on sex differences. Literature review On the basis of the empirical literature, it is clear that test anxiety is associated with reduced student grade point average (Faro’, Ghana,& Spielberg, 2012), but there are few large scale studies reporting that there are significant gender differences in test anxiety.
Although, studies have consistently found that females student have significantly higher test anxiety than male students, sex differences and mix of other independent sample variables should be factored (age chronology, gender and disciplines for example mathematics and sciences verse verbal aptitude tests ) into future investigation to support this hypothesis (Farrago, Ghana,& Spielberg, 2012). Fire (2003) asserts that test anxiety begins early in elementary school and decreases in high school and college, meaning age has a significant stake on the levels of test anxiety.
The etiology of test anxiety is important to counselors, education instructors and students, who are determined in mitigating and controlling or the negative implications of achievements in GAPS and aptitude test. Fire’s experimented with a modified Quinn Test Anxiety Behavior Scale to detect differences between the sexes in relation with test anxiety. Floor, however, failed to reject the hypothesis that a significant difference between the genders existed. The author went further to use a multivariate regression to account for variability contributed by age and class rank and found a statistic significant difference.
The findings shows that it is not gender alone that causes significant differences in general test anxiety. Future research study should isolate the variables to account for significant differences. There is supporting evidence to suggest that the higher the test anxiety, the greater the effects of school learning and intellectual development especially among females students with a combination of low self esteem issues Authors of the gender differences in test anxiety and academic performance suggest that a chronic high level state of anxiety exerts slow learning process among medical students.
The research study has practical application on imply and effective counseling and therapeutic interventions into the medical colleges and universities. The variance for female response shows a parallel pattern that is a consistent to outcome within a cohort of gendered test literatures. Methods Participants were administered with a one page general information measure that included questions about age, gender, ethnicity and the level of test anxiety, an ordinal numerical format was mounted on a scale of as response to the latter question . Level 1 on the scale represented minimum anxiety, while level 10 depicted a maximum test anxiety.
The conducted survey employed a convenient sampling design to collect data due to limited resources and a preconceived understanding of the expected results as per the main hypothesis. With limited time in collecting data and asking the minimal needed questions from the participants, a non-significant biased result was not a surprise in this context. The main independent variable was the sex differences on responses measured by the aforementioned scale. Other descriptive statistics were computed alongside to offer the true nature of this distribution, range, median, variance and the standard aviation.
In addition, SPAS, an important analytical tool was used for computing the 2 independent sample t-test, data entry. The independent variable in the model is gender difference in response. The analyses occur in the following stages using SSP. First, to estimate pertinent model’s feature the main independent variable: sex difference, structural equation model for the female and the male students. That is, the measurement and causal parameters are estimated simultaneously. Finally, the hypothesis is tested and comparison is made between female and male structural parameters.
The results were as follows: Results Descriptive statistics for the main variable was computed for the small sample of 41 SUN students. The average anxiety test score for males (M=6. 4, SDвЂ?I . 19 and VarianceвЂ?I . 4) was significantly lower than that of female student’s score (F=6. 9, SD=2. 5, and Variance=6. 1). The median measure response showed that half of the males participants suffered from test anxiety, while over fifty per cent of females respondents reported positive to test anxiety. The ethnicity composition for females was more evenly represented than that of male students.
Hispanic participants for both genders were equally over represented 14% of the total sample=41 and African American were under represented with a 4. 9% portion. The t sample-test was computed to determine the difference between the two group means. The null hypothesis: average test anxiety for females�average test anxiety for males. Null hypothesis; the interpretation shows a significant difference exists. Conclusions [discussions Since the obtained t (0. 8) is less than the critical t (2. 04), we were able to conclude with a . 95 confidence that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected.
The evidence is not strong enough to reject chances (sampling error) as the explanation for the difference between means of female students and male students. However, on the basis of this investigation, test anxiety did approach a gendered observed significance difference between females and males. The range between the highest and lowest response (range comparison 9 and M=4) approximated a large discrepancy. These findings were much expected given that female students are more inclined to higher test anxiety response than their male counterparts, but not enough to reject the null hypothesis.
It is also important to note that the age standard deviation for males was much less by 5. 4 than that of females=6. 9. The presence of much older female subjects as participants explains this discrepancy. The skewed the results should factor as an important influence to the test anxiety scores. This finding supports the idea that male students tend to rationalize their anxiety problems better than their female counterparts, but challenges the presumption that female students generally do not. This indicates that effects of anxiety do have implications on esteem issues as well as social functioning.
Yet it also brings further questions regarding the longer-term consequences of test anxiety on Job related assignments even after school (Floor, 2003). It is important to mention that diagnoses of test anxiety on the basis of a single score on any test anxiety measure should never be used to explain an individual’s behavior. In addition, the results of this study were drawn from a small sample of SUN students and do not constitute the nationally representative sample needed to Lully evaluate the mean difference in gendered anxiety tests of the student population.
Test anxiety has been identified by many students as an important problem that is associated with the reduction of GAP score at every educational level. The implications of these findings may offer treatment cues to remedial counseling for many institutions. Education instructors and school counselors will benefit in understanding the convoluted causes of test anxiety. This help in designing the best therapeutic treatments in counseling for solving anxiety problems of poor performance and underachievement among students.