A Network Psychometric Analysis of Math Anxiety Factors in Italian Psychology Students

Dealing with mathematics can induce significant anxiety, affecting academic performance: this phenomenon is known as Math Anxiety (MA). While math anxiety scales were mostly developed in English, some have been translated and validated for Italian populations (e.g., the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale). This study translated the 3-factor MAS-UK scale into Italian, producing a new tool, MAS-IT, which was validated in a sample of 324 Italian psychology undergraduates. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) tested the original MAS-UK 3-factor model and revealed that it did not fit the MAS-IT data. A subsequent Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA) identified four distinct factors of math anxiety in MAS-IT. The “Passive Observation MA” factor remained stable across the analyses, whereas the “Evaluation MA” and “Everyday/Social MA” items showed poor stability. These quantitative findings suggest potential cultural or contextual differences in the expression of math anxiety among today’s psychology undergraduates, highlighting the need for more appropriate assessment tools tailored to this population.