Test Anxiety: Gender and Academic Achievements of University Students

Objectives: To investigate undergraduate students’ test anxiety level; to measure the correlation between undergraduate students test anxiety with their academic achievement; and to measure the correlation of undergraduate students’ test anxiety from the perspective of their gender. Methodology: Students of eight departments at University of Swat constituted the study sample. Among these, 126 undergraduate level students were selected through simple random sampling technique. The tool used for the study was Westwide Test Anxiety Scale. Analysis of data was done using SPSS version 21.

Results: Among the selected respondents, there were 89 (70.63%) male and 37 (29.37%) female students. Our results revealed that 39.7% of undergraduate university students were suffering from moderately high test anxiety. Male students had 44.9% while female students had 27% moderately high test anxiety. The correlation coefficient between CGPA and test anxiety of students was -.317 which shows inverse relationship. The average CGPA of male students was 2.8 while female students had a CGPA of 3.19. The mean test score of male undergraduate students was 3.25 ±0.60 and female under graduate students was 3.13 ±0.77, p value .366.

Conclusion: Moderately high test anxiety was found in undergraduate university students which was similar in both male and female students. Female students showed better performance as compared to male students.

Key Words: Test anxiety, Academic achievement, Undergraduate students