Test Anxiety: A Major Educational Problem and What Can Be Done About It by Kennedy T. Hill and Allan Wigfield

This paper by Hill and colleagues was published in September 1984 in The Elementary School Journal.

Motivation is an important factor for school achievement. As such, test anxiety is an important aspect of negative motivation and it has debilitating effects on school achievement. Test anxiety is defined as “an unpleasant feeling or emotional state that has physiological and behavioural concomitants, and that is experienced in formal testing or other evaluative situations” (Dusek, 1980, p.88). Theorists believe that test anxiety develops for some children when they are in preschool or elementary school, a time when parents begin to make unrealistic or overly high demands for their children’s scholastic performance.

Consequently, when their children fail to meet their expectations, the parents react negatively, which in their make their children become fearful of evaluation in achievement situations and also overly concerned about adult reaction to their academic grades.

Anxiety is traditionally measured by student self-report questionnaires. Of which the most common one for children is the Test Anxiety Scale for Children (TASC). This test was developed by S. Sarason et al. (1960). It consists of 30-item scale that measure anxiety about test performance. Example questions include “Do you feel nervous while you are taking a test?”, and “Do you think you worry more about school than other children?”.

Another 11-item Lie Scale for Children (LSC) was developed by S. Sarason et al., which is a defensiveness measure, in order to control for the possibility that some children are unwilling to report anxiety. Example questions include “Do you ever worry?”. From the 11-item Lie Scale for Children, Sarason demonstrated that highly defensive children report less anxiety although they perform more like high-anxious children. Interestingly, their study show that boys are more likely to be defensive, while girls are more likely to admit anxiety. But both genders measure equally on anxiety effects.