ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives

Although anxiety consists of multiple components, including cognitive, affective, motivational, and physiological, and some findings suggest that there might be differences regarding their control antecedents and effects on performance, previous studies have largely neglected to examine these components separately and for reasons of convenience often assessed test anxiety as a unified construct using a single-item. Therefore, this study investigated the different test anxiety components with the goal to: (1) examine the relative impact of the anxiety components in the mediating mechanism that connects control and performance – as proposed by Pekrun’s control-value theory, and (2) determine which specific anxiety component is underlying common single-item anxiety measures.

Methods

The research questions were investigated using an intra-individual approach in a sample of N = 137 German 8th graders during a mathematics exam.

Results

As expected, control was negatively related to all anxiety components, but associations varied in strength. Additionally, the components differed in their relative impact on performance, with the cognitive component being central for this outcome. Furthermore, common single-item measures seem to specifically assess the affective component, and thus not the component most relevant for test performance.

Conclusion

Consequently, our study strongly recommends to distinguish between the anxiety components depending on the research question at hand.

中文翻译：

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测试焦虑成分：测试他们的控制前因和对表现的影响的个体内部方法

摘要

背景和目标

尽管焦虑由多个组成部分组成，包括认知、情感、动机和生理，并且一些研究结果表明，它们的控制前因和对表现的影响可能存在差异，但以前的研究在很大程度上忽略了对这些组成部分的单独检查和出于方便的原因通常使用单个项目将考试焦虑评估为一个统一的结构。因此，本研究调查了不同的考试焦虑成分，目的是：（1）检验焦虑成分在连接控制和表现的中介机制中的相对影响——正如 Pekrun 的控制价值理论所提出的，以及（2）确定哪个特定的焦虑成分是常见的单项焦虑测量的基础。

方法

在数学考试期间，对N  = 137 名德国 8 年级学生的样本使用个人内部方法对研究问题进行了调查。

结果

正如预期的那样，控制与所有焦虑成分都呈负相关，但关联的强度各不相同。此外，这些成分对绩效的相对影响不同，认知成分是这一结果的核心。此外，常见的单项测量似乎专门评估情感成分，因此不是与测试性能最相关的成分。

结论

因此，我们的研究强烈建议根据手头的研究问题区分焦虑成分。