EXPLORING THE LINK BETWEEN EVALUATION APPREHENSION AND ACADEMIC ANXIETY AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The study investigated the relationship between fear of negative evaluation and academic anxiety among undergraduate students, four hundred and fifty-seven (457) undergraduate students which comprises of 202 males and 255 females with mean age of 20.61 and SD of 2.410 were selected using multi-stage (cluster, simple random: by balloting and purposive) sampling techniques as participants from Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu. Cassady et al. (2019) Academic Anxiety Scale and Watson and Friend (1969) Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) were used for data collection, Correlational design was adopted based on the fact that the relationships between the predictor variables and dependent variable were investigated and also the researchers did not manipulate or control any of the variables. The statistical test that was used for data analysis was Pearson correlation coefficient SPSS version 27 was used to analysis the data. Findings show there was a significant positive relationship between fear of negative evaluation and academic anxiety at r= .261 at p< .01. Hence, school authority should come up with a modality or a course work that can help to improve student positive view about themselves, so as to bring about positive evaluation which will reduce fear of negative evaluation