Measurement of Test Anxiety: An Overview

Anxiety competes only with bias for top billing as the villain in the melodrama of standardized testing. On the basis of a comprehensive review of the literature, Hembree (1988) concluded that test anxiety (a) causes poor performance; (b) is inversely related to students’ self-esteem; (c) is directly related to students’ fears of negative evaluation, defensiveness, and other forms of anxiety; (d) is influenced by ability, gender, and school grade level; and (e) can be reduced effectively by a variety of treatments. Clearly, test anxiety is a construct worthy of careful evaluation.