Hunched shoulders, pale faces, bloodshot eyes, anxious chit-chat… Yes, students have been afflicted with a contagious disease commonly known as Midterms.

Whereas some students seem to cope successful with the stress of exams, others may experience decline in performance in these evaluative situations. This disparity can be explained by differences in state anxiety. As opposed to trait anxiety, which refers to a general level of stress that is characteristic of an individual, state anxiety is developed in response to a fear or danger of a particular situation. Hence, during exams, individuals high in test anxiety may experience heightened emotions, greater activation of the autonomic nervous system as well as more worry and task-irrelevant thoughts that will most likely interfere with their performance on the test.

As early as the 1950s, Seymour Sarason, a pioneer in research on test anxiety, observed that “we live in a test-conscious, test-giving culture in which the lives of people are in part determined by their test performance” (p. 26). Thus, it is not surprising that a lot of effort was put into the development of tests to measure individual differences in test anxiety. In 1980, Charles Spielberger developed the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI), a short, objective, self-report scale. The TAI consists of 20 items on which subjects must rate on a scale from 1 to 4 how frequently they have experienced specific manifestations of test anxiety.

A few psychometric properties of the TAI

• Validity evidence based on internal structure: The TAI consists of two sub-scales: Worry and Emotionality. Several researches have supported that factorial model by conducting confirmatory factor analysis (e.g., Everson, Millsap, & Rodriguez, 1991).
• Validity evidence based on relations to other variables: Spielberger demonstrated that the TAI scale and sub-scales scores correlated highly with other widely used test anxiety measures (convergent validity) and with academic achievement (concurrent validity).
• Reliability: Speilberger reported that the subscales have high internal consistency, meaning that there is sufficient intercorrelation between test items.

Try it yourself

How often do you have thoughts like:

“I wish there were some way to succeed without taking tests”

“I have a hollow, uneasy feeling before taking a test”

“I cannot stand to have people walking around and watching me while I take a test”

Keep in mind that taking a test will probably never be an enjoyable experience, and that some anxiety is adaptive. Remember the Optimal Performance curve? The key is finding your own “sweet spot”!

References:

Spielberger, C. D. (2010). Test Anxiety Inventory. Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology. doi: 10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0985

Everson, H. T., Millsap, R. E., & Rodriguez, C. M. (1991). Isolating gender differences in test anxiety: a confirmatory factor analysis of the Test Anxiety Inventory. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 51(1), 243-251. doi: 10.1177/0013164491511024