The Relationship between Test Anxiety and Academic Performance at Addis Ababa University Institute of Technology
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2014-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between test anxiety and academic
performance of university students. This study employed the mixed methods approach to collect
and analyze data. The population of the study was AAIT final year students. The participants of
the study were 221 final year engineering students of which 172 were males and 49 females.
The mean ages of the participants were 23.34. One scale that is Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI)
developed by Professor Emeritus and Dr. Charles D. Spielberger (1980) was individually
administered to the participants. Interview questions were also administered. Additionally
document mining was employed. Pearson product moment correlation-test and one-way
ANOVA were computed to analyze the data. The finding of the study indicate that test anxiety of
university students is inversely and significantly correlated with their academic performance
with weak relationship (r= -.171). The results suggest that the female university students reported
significantly higher test anxiety level compared to their male students counterparts (t = 2.790;
df=219;p = <0.001). Again the male university students achieved statistically insignificant
difference in their GPAS as compared to the female students (t =-5.866, df =219, p 0.414).
There is no significant difference in the academic performance (GPA) among the University
students by their levels of test anxiety. More over a further research is recommended in order to
examine the existence of gender differences in test anxiety and the impact of test anxiety on
academic performance of students at different level of education
Description
Keywords
Anxiety and Academic Performance