The effects of test anxiety on test performance of some primary seven Kenyan school children

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to investigate by means of an exploratory survey, the effects of test anxiety on test performance for some primary seven school children in Kisumu Municipality. More precisely, the performance of groups of children who report high test anxiety was compared with performance of children who report low test anxiety. The sample of subjects used in the study consisted of 252 standard seven pupils drawn from seven primary schools within the Municipality of Kisumu. Test anxiety was measured by the Test Anxiety Scale for Children (TASC); Test performance was measured by the General Verbal Ability Test suitable for use in African schools (GVAT) together with end-term school marks. Based mainly on Sarason's Interfering response theory, it was predicted that: 1) the correlation between test anxiety and academic performance would be negative. 2) bright high test-anxious subjects would perform better than their low test-anxious counterparts. 3) academically average high test-anxious subjects would perform better than their low test-anxious counterparts. 4) academically below-average low test-anxious subjects would perform better than their high test anxious counterparts. The results obtained indicated that under less evaluative test-taking conditions, test anxiety facilitates the performance of bright pupils. Highly evaluative conditions seemed to allow for interfering effects of anxiety to operate, thus, causing decrements in performance. It was concluded that the present educational practice of laying a lot of emphasis on the importance of examinations is only beneficial to low test-anxious bright children; for this latter category of children,ways need to be found by which high test-anxious individuals can be challenged but their anxiety kept within non-interfering limits. Anxiety did not appear to be a significant problem for low ability children. This category of children showed better performance under high ego-involving conditions than their counterparts in the low ego-involvement condition. While the level of anxiety did not seem to matter, ego-involving instructions seemed to have provided the children with positive motivation which culminated in their better performance. It was suggested that these children need more of training in test-taking and coping skills before the nature of test anxiety effects on their performance can be determined.