The Relationship Between Perceived Expectations and Test Anxiety, Codie Byrnes SOP3214C
Opening
The current study explores the hypothesis that social support plays a significant role in alleviating test anxiety among students. By understanding the correlation between social support and test anxiety levels, it is aimed to help on the potential benefits of interpersonal support in academic settings.
Perceived Academic Expectations
The main independent variable in the experiment is “perceived academic expectations.” This variable represents the students’ subjective assessment of the expectations they hold for themselves in terms of their academic achievements and abilities. The experiment aims to explore how these perceived academic expectations, categorized into two levels: high expectations and low expectations, may influence other factors like social support, test anxiety, and overall academic experiences. Studying this independent variable can gain insights into how students’ self-assessment of their academic capabilities impacts various aspects of their education and well-being.
Two levels of Independent Variable
In this experiment, the independent variable has two levels: high expectations and low expectations. High expectations refer to participants who receive positive messages and encouragement, leading them to anticipate achieving well academically. On the other hand, low expectations represent participants who do not receive positive messages and may not anticipate performing as strongly. By examining how these two levels of expectations influence the dependent variable, perceived academic performance, researchers can better understand the impact of external factors on students’ self-assessment and its implications for their overall academic experience.
Reported Test Anxiety
Reported test anxiety serves as the dependent variable in the experiment, reflecting participants’ self-reported levels of anxiety experienced during tests or examinations. As we manipulate the independent variable of perceived academic expectations, it is aimed to understand how it may influence students’ reported test anxiety levels. By studying this dependent variable, the experiment seeks to uncover the potential relationship between perceived academic expectations and the emotional responses students have towards academic evaluations, providing insights into the impact of expectations on test-related anxiety.
Hypotheses
In this research, we aim to investigate how perceived expectations and social support influence test-related anxiety in college students. By manipulating these factors and measuring their impact, we predict that students receiving positive messages with high expectations may experience higher test anxiety compared to those with low expectations. Additionally, among students without positive messages, we anticipate higher test anxiety among those with high expectations compared to those with low expectations.
Table 1
table
Discussion
The study reveals a link between perceived academic expectations and reported test anxiety levels in college students. Those with high expectations exhibited higher test anxiety compared to their counterparts with lower expectations. The self-reporting nature of the dependent variable, reported test anxiety, might introduce response biases and limit result accuracy. Despite this limitation, the experimental design allowed for the controlled manipulation of perceived academic expectations, providing valuable insights to inform targeted interventions to alleviate test-related stress and help with academic performance.
Conclusion
This study is important because of the deeper value to understand emotional support and success and if it has a correlation. The study could have clinical significance lies in illuminating the complex relationship between students’ perceived academic expectations and emotional responses, notably test anxiety, emphasizing the need for tailored therapeutic interventions to optimize academic performance.