Science University Research Symposium (SURS)
Scale for Academic Performance Anxiety
Publication Date
11-30-2023
College
Sciences and Mathematics, College of
Department
Psychological Science, Department of
SURS Faculty Advisor
Jessica Hocking
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract
The current study aims to develop a valid and reliable measure of academic performance anxiety. In our scale, we defined performance anxiety as the anxiety/fear of being unable to perform a task or of performing the task in such a way that creates positive expectations they can not continuously meet. Previous research has shown that a person’s educational experiences can have associations with their mental health and anxiety levels, both short-term and later in life (Blanco et al., 2015; Pizzie & Kraemer, 2019). However, there is currently no scale that specifically measures academic performance anxiety. Therefore, we developed the Academic Performance Anxiety Scale (APAS) to better explore the complex connections between academics and anxiety. The participants for our study were Belmont University students enrolled in General and Introductory Psychology classes. Our study had different measures to measure academic performance anxiety and related constructs. The first being our newly developed, twenty-question Academic Performance Anxiety Scale. We then included other scales to help validate our scale ensuring it is valid in measuring performance anxiety. The other scales were Westside Test Anxiety Scale (Driscoll, 2007), College Adjustment Scale Anxiety sub-scale (Anton & Reed, 1991), Brief Symptom Inventory Anxiety sub-scale (Derogatis, 2004), and General Academic Self-Efficacy Scal[JH1] e (Van Zyl et al. 2022). We tested three hypotheses. First, we hypothesized that our scale would demonstrate reliability through internal consistency, split-half reliability, inter-item correlations, and item-total correlations. Second, we hypothesized that our scale would demonstrate convergent validity by being significantly associated with generalized anxiety, test anxiety, and general academic self-efficacy. Third, we hypothesized that our scale would significantly predict GPA, in which a higher score on the performance anxiety scale would correlate with a lower GPA score and vice versa. Results and discussion are forthcoming. Results and discussion are forthcoming.
Recommended Citation
West, Sarah; Brown, McLain; Rambang, Chakuen; and Taylor, Madison, "Scale for Academic Performance Anxiety" (2023). Science University Research Symposium (SURS). 135.
https://repository.belmont.edu/surs/135
