Test anxiety components: an intra-individual approach testing their control antecedents and effects on performance

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.