TEST ANXIETY AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE
This research reviews literature relevant to the relationship between test anxiety and academic performance among high school students. At a general level, a test is any measurement that yields quantitative data (Chaplin, 1989, p. 558). A school room examination is a test within this context, and the numerical grade received on such an examination is a measure of a subject's performance on a test of this type. At a general level, anxiety is a feeling of mingled dread and apprehension about the future without a specific cause for such fear (Chaplin, 1989, p. 42). Test anxiety is a more specific phenomenon in which a graded examination is the object inducing fear, and in which the character of the apprehension is a fear of performing poorly (failing) the examination in question.
The preliminary review of the literature related to test anxiety revealed four areas that merited more intensive examination. These areas are gender differences associated with test anxiety among high school students, the causal relationship between test anxiety and academic performance among high school students, appropriate therapies for high school students experiencing test anxiety, and appropriate methodologies for the measurement of text anxiety among high school students. The findings of the review of literature relevant to these four areas of interest are presented in the remaining discussions of this paper.
Sharma and Sud (1990, pp. 183-201) reported the results of a cross-cultural study that found that female high school students experience higher levels of test anxiety than do males irrespective of cultural background. The study involved high school students from four Asian cultures (China, India, Jordan, and Korea) and five Euro-American cultures (Germany, Hungary, Italy, Turkey, and the United States). The researchers concluded that a major causal factor involved in the gender-related difference...