Test Anxiety

Test Anxiety is defined by Kondo (1996) as a double situation specific personality trait, consisting of two psychological components; emotional arousal and worry. Several studies have focused on test anxiety, as it is associated with lower test results and a higher amount of stress, so has attracted attention from researchers and teachers (Hembree 1998; Sarason and Sarason 1990) as cited in Kondo (1996). Most of the focus has been to reduce test anxiety by investigating the cognitive, affective and behavioural approaches. Kondo (1996) illustrates that those who take a cognitive approach to reduce test anxiety believe thinking disturbances are the main cause of the test anxiety and thus therapies for this includes cognitive reconstructuring
Kondo (1994) produced a typology of strategies which included four basic methods; cognitive, affective, behavioural methods and resignation. Furthermore, it was found that subjects with high test anxiety did not differ with those who have low test anxiety, in what strategies they reported they used. Also, high anxious subjects were more likely to report affective and behavioural strategies than low anxious ones. However, the limitations of Kondo's (1994) study is that the results can not be generalised to test anxiety, as the responses to anxiety may be different for subjects who will be undertaking an examination . Further investigations by Kondo (1996), to investigate the actual responses subjects used for pre-test anxiety, reported that high test anxious subjects significantly used more strategies to reduce anxiety then low test anxious participants. Furthermore, Kondo's (1996) later study illustrated that high test anxious subjects used more Concentration and Preparation responses, then the Thinking, Resignation and Concentration
The t test indicates that the Test Anxiety response for the male first and third year undergraduates (mean 28.35) was not significantly different to the Test Anxiety response of the female first and third year undergraduates (mean 27.65).

The results of Test Anxiety between gender supports the first part of the two-tailed hypothesis, that stated that there would not be a significant difference between the male and female first and third year undergraduates.

The data for the Test Anxiety responses between the first year male and female undergraduates (mean 23.05) and the third year male and female undergraduates (32.95), showed a higher variance in the responses. The minimum response of the first year undergraduates was 16.00, compared with the minimum response of 26.00 for the third year undergraduates. The maximum response for the first year undergraduates was 34.00, whereas the response was 40.00 for the third year undergraduates. The results indicate a grater difference between the first and third year undergraduates with the third year undergraduates having a generally higher Test Anxiety response, compared with the first year