Relationship Between Test Anxiety And Performance In Examination Of Students In Basic Nursing Schools In Enugu Urban, Enugu State

ABSTRACT

Test anxiety is conceived as the hyper-arousal condition that results in physiological,

emotional and intellectual changes that prevent the effective use of the previously learned

information while taking an examination. It is composed of “worry” which a cognitive

anxiety related with performance and “emotionality” the arousal of autonomic nervous

system in evaluative situations (Morris & Liebert 1970 in Ndirangu 2009). Examination

performance is the grade point or scores obtained following examination. It is

synonymous with academic performance. The purpose of the study was to determine

the relationship between test anxiety and examination performance of Basic Nursing

Students in Enugu Urban. The correlation study design was used. The study was carried

out among 140 PTS students of school of UNTH and School of Nursing ESUTH

comprising 63 students from UNTH and 77 from ESUTH. Sarason’s test anxiety

instrument was used to collect data on students test anxiety and published PTS results

used for data on examination performance. The result showed that there is an inverse

relationship between test anxiety and examination performance of the students r = -.20, N

= 140 P = 02. It was also established that students with mild test anxiety had better

examination performance than those with moderate test anxiety. The results also showed

no significant difference in the test anxiety levels between Schools. The major

educational implication is that high anxiety will lead to poor examination performance

while mild and moderate anxiety levels will give good examination performance. It is

recommended that a curriculum that is inclusive of strategies of coping with test anxiety

be developed.