EFFECTS
OF
ANXIETY
ON QUANTITY
OF
EXAMINATION PREPARATION
ROY MARTIN
AND
JOEL
MEYERS
Temple
Unwersity
The American educational system generally assumes that students spend time
outside the classroom learning course material presented during instruction time.
The importance of this student behavior in the educational process
js
attested to
by teachers who cite poor homework performance or a lack of examination prep-
aration
as
a
primary cause of student failure. Despite its apparent importance,
there has been little research into the variables that affect out-of-class preparation.
Marwardt and Sikkink
(1970)
found student classification (freshman, graduate,
etc.) and the amount of reading material assigned in
a
course to be related positively
to quantity of out-of-class preparation in college students. Mawhinney, Bostow,
Laws, Blumenfeld, and Hopkins
(1971)
studied the effect of testing schedules on
student preparation and found that daily testing produced the highest and most
consistent rates of out-of-class preparation. On the other hand, less frequent testing
(once every
7
days or longer) produced sporadic effort and lower daily rates of
preparation. Martin
(1970)
investigated the relationship between anxiety asso-
ciated with an upcoming examination and study for that examination. He used
advanced graduate students who were preparing
for
doctoral qualifying examina-
tions and found that the total amount of study during the last
2
weeks prior to the
examination correlated negatively
(T
=
-
.55)
with the level of state anxiety during
that period.
The results of Martin’s study are of considerable theoretical interest in that
they provide an alternative explanation for the oft-reported negative relationship
between anxiety and examination performance (Davidson,
1959;
Hill
&
Sarason,
1966;
Sarason, Hill
&
Zimbardo,
1964;
Spielberger,
1966).
The reduction in examina-
tion performance for high anxious students usually
is
interpreted
as
a
result of
detrimental effects of anxiety manifest during performance of the examination.
Another explanation can be offered that is based on the assumption that anxiety
manifest during the examination correlates positively with anxiety manifest during
preparation for the examination. That is,
if
there is
a
negative correlation between
anxiety and preparation, then negative correlations between anxiety and perform-
ance on examination could result
as
much from
a
reduction in quantity of prepara-
tion due to anxiety manifest during preparation
as
from a reduction in performance
due to anxiety manifest at the time of the examination.
The negative relationship between anxiety and quantity of preparation reported
by Martin was obtained on
a
small number of
Ss
who were preparing for doctoral
qualifying examinations. There is every reason to believe that this examination
was more stressful than most educational examinations. Thus,
it
was the purpose
of the present study to replicate the earlier investigation with a larger sample
size in more typical classroom examination circumstances.
METHOD
Subjects
One hundred female, undergraduate, elementary education
majors
at the
University of Texas at Austin served
as
Ss.
All were enrolled
in
a one-semester
mathematics course that had a reputation among the students
as
being academically