Test anxiety and performance in high-stakes testing

Test anxiety and performance in high-stakes testing
A study published in Contemporary Educational Psychology suggests that the relationship between test anxiety and performance in high-stakes tests is positive, but the relationship varies for students with different achievement levels.
 
Yao-Ting Sung and colleagues at the National Taiwan University used data from 1,931 Taiwanese ninth graders from 37 schools. The Basic Competence Test (BCTEST) was used to benchmark their achievement. The BCTEST is a high-stakes test for Taiwan junior-high school students, determining to which high schools with different levels of prestige and tuition fees they will be admitted. Subjects in the test included Mandarin, English, Mathematics, Social studies, Science and Writing. Test anxiety was measured by the examination stress scale.
 
Findings include:
  • The overall relationship between text-anxiety and learning achievement in high-stakes testing was positive (r =+0.18).
  • Lower levels of test-anxiety were found among high-achievement and low-achievement students while higher levels of test-anxiety were found among moderate-achievement students.
  • For higher achievement students, the relationship between text-anxiety and achievement in high-stakes testing was found to be negative (r = -0.16), while for the group of students with lower achievement, a positive relationship was found (r= +0.22).

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