Age and Gender factors of Test Anxiety among Undergraduate Students in Two Southwestern Nigerian Universities

Headnote

This present study examined age and gender as factors of test anxiety among undergraduates from two universities in Nigeria. A total of 281 randomly selected participants participated in the study and they responded to the 20-item Suinn test anxiety behavior scale. For analysis of data the t-test for independent samples was used and results suggested that age and gender do not significantly predict test anxiety among undergraduates. It is therefore concluded that other variables apart from demographics may account for test anxiety among undergraduates in Nigeria. More research would need to be done in this area in order to ascertain the factors that may predict test anxiety among undergraduates in Nigeria and thereby provide empirical basis for intervention to help the test-anxious.

Keywords: Test anxiety, gender, age, undergraduate, University students.

Anxiety as a Psychological construct plays a major role in one's life (Razazadeh & Tavakoli 2009). One of these anxieties is test anxiety or apprehension over academic evaluation (Mohsen & Mansoor, 2009). Test anxiety has been defined as a phobia for failure and or a negative evaluation that is usually related to previously established standard by self or other institutions; self-blame for perceived shortcomings; social evaluation in relation to students' estimate of how others are doing and negative prediction of what would be the outcome of a test (Olatoye, 2009). It is characterized by the feeling of uneasiness or apprehension that a student experiences before, during or after a test because of the fear of failure (Oladipo & Ogungbamila, 2013).

Test anxiety has emerged as one of the most salient and most widely studied in literature and has been identified as a pervasive problem in modern society. Scholars have even asserted that as the information age continues to evolve, test scores will become more important than they are today in relation to evaluating applicants for jobs, admitting candidates into educational programs and even in evaluating students for promotion into another level in their studies (Razazadeh & Tavakoli 2009).

Year-in-year out, many students under-perform in schools because of heightened test anxiety (Zeidner, 1998), although test anxiety is known to depend on several variables such as levels of motivation, task complexity and practical consequences of high or low performance (Humphreys & Revelle, 1984), it varies widely...