Mathematics Anxiety and its Impact on Students’ Achievement: With Specific Reference to Grade Nine Students of East Shoa Zone in Oromia Region
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Date
2026-04-20
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Addis ababa University
Abstract
This study was aimed to examine the impact of mathematics anxiety on achievement. It was also
focused on examining gender difference in mathematics anxiety as well as mathematics
achievement. The study was conducted on five randomly selected public high schools of East
Shoa zone. Subjects included 370 students, 184 male and 186 female. Math anxiety was
measured using both the English version of Math Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS) and the Oromic
version of math anxiety rating scale (MARS). The instrument used to measure achievement was
the Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT), which was developed by the researcher. To
accomplish the goal of this study, a quantitative study which was a survey study was used and a
path analysis model was used to investigate the direct and indirect effect of each predictor
variable on the criterion variable. The finding revealed that there was a significant negative
correlation between mathematics anxiety and achievement (r = -0.250, p < 0. 01). Revealing
that students who have high mathematics anxiety tended to perform poorly on mathematics
achievement. However, those who have low mathematics anxiety tended to score high in
mathematics achievement. There was a significant gender difference in mathematics anxiety (df
= 368, t= -3.258, p < 0.01); showing that female students’ are more anxious about mathematics
than male. There was also a significant gender difference in mathematics achievement (df =368,
t = 5.151, p < 0 .01). Generally, the result of the study shows that male students are superior in
all variables treated in the study. Moreover, the result of the study reveal that grade nine
students’ math anxiety level is at a moderate level. The result of path analysis shows that prior
math achievement, sex, affective subscale and avoidance subscale were the most influential
causes for mathematics achievement. While affective subscales, cognitive subscales and
avoidance subscales were the causes of mathematics anxiety. Moreover, prior math achievement
had a stronger direct effect on mathematics achievement than did any of the variables in the
study, while affective subscale had a stronger direct effect on mathematics anxiety than did any
of the other two subscales.
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Keywords
the impact of mathematics anxiety on achievement.