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The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vgnt20
Components of School Anxiety: Developmental Trends and Sex Differences a
a
Larry W. Morris , Cynthia S. Finkelstein & William R. Fisher
a
a
Department of Psychology , Middle Tennessee State University , Murfreesboro , Tennessee , 37132 , USA Published online: 04 Sep 2012.
To cite this article: Larry W. Morris , Cynthia S. Finkelstein & William R. Fisher (1976) Components of School Anxiety: Developmental Trends and Sex Differences, The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development, 128:1, 49-57, DOI: 10.1080/00221325.1976.10533971 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221325.1976.10533971
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
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The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1976, 128,4947,
COMPONENTS O F SCHOOL ANXIETY: DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS AND SEX DIFFERENCES* Middle Tennessee State University
LARRY w. MORRIS, CYNTHIA s. FINKELSTEIN, AND WILLIAMR. FISHER
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SUMMARY Dunn's School Anxiety Questionnaire was administered to 104 third through eighth graders (Study I) and 122 eighth graders (Study II). Significant decrements in anxiety with increasing age were found for worry (but not emotionality), report card anxiety, and failure anxiety:In Study I girls scored significantly higher than boys on emotionality (but not worry) and test anxiety. Sex differences were greater in Study 11, girls scoring consistently higher. In Study I1 a worry-emotionality questionnaire administered immediately preceding a final examination correlated highly with School Anxiety Questionnaire scores. Results are taken as generally supportive of the multidimensional approach to the study of school anxiety.
A. INTRODUCTION Generally, researchers have found that girls report more school anxiety than boys (4, 6, 10, 11). It may be that boys have more varied interests and are less dependent on academic achievement for prestige and social recognition or that it is less socially acceptable for boys to admit anxiety. In either case, developmental changes would apbear to be important in determining the nature and extent of school-related anxiety. However, results reported from studies of the effects of age on anxiety level have not been consistent. Dunn (2) reported a trend for adolescents to manifest more anxiety about school than preadolescents. In contrast, a decline in test
* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on August 6, 1974. Copyright, 1976, by The Journal Press. I Studies I and I1 were based on Masters theses submitted by the second and third authors, respectively, in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts degree at Middle Tennessee State University. Requests for reprints should be addressed to the first author at the address shown at the end of this article. 49
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50
JOURNAL O F GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
anxiety with age (grades 7-12) was reported by Manley and Rosemier (6) for both male and female S s . Consistent with recent attempts to refine the anxiety construct further by distinguishing among its various components, the studies reported herein represent an attempt to extend knowledge about anxiety trends related to age and sex differences by applying Dunn’s ( 3 ) distinction among five types of school anxiety and Liebert and Morris’ (5) worry-emotionality distinction. The development of the School Anxiety Questionnaire ( 3 ) was based on the assumption that it is more effective to concentrate on relatively discrete, circumscribed, and situationally specific anxiety rather than on general anxiety. The five types of anxiety specified as composing school anxiety are recitation anxiety, test anxiety, report card anxiety, achievement anxiety, and failure anxiety. Studying the school anxiety of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children, Dunn found that test anxiety, failure anxiety, and report card anxiety decreased, achievement anxiety remained constant, and recitation anxiety increased with age. Sex differences were found only on report card anxiety, with girls reporting less than boys. This multidimensional approach seems promising and therefore is extended in the present investigations through exploration of a wider range of age groups. The Liebert-Morris position distinguishes between (a) worry-cognitive concern about the outcome of an approaching or immediately experienced event-and ( b ) emotionality-physiological and affective arousal experienced in the testing situation-as major components of test anxiety. Thus, worry is cognitive activity (e.g., concern, dread) which is consciously experienced. Emotionality is the autonomic, bodily reaction to stress (arousal or activation) and accompanying intensified affective or emotional “feeling” states (e.g., nervousness, tenseness). It has been demonstrated that worry is consistently more negatively related to academic and intelligence test performance than is emotionality (1, 7 , 8). Likewise, these components have been shown to be aroused and maintained by different elements of the testing situation. Worry varies primarily as an inverse function of students’ expected performance (5) and as a function of failure-threat: i.e., negative feedback (9). Emotionality, unrelated to these conditions, was aroused by the threat of electric shock in the latter study, and otherwise is aroused largely by specific test-situation cues involved in academic testing (12). The studies reported herein represent the first attempt to apply the worry-emotionality distinction to children’s school anxiety. It was expected that worry would increase with age,
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LARRY W. MORRIS, et al.
51
as students become more aware of the consequences of their academic performance, and that this concern would increase earlier and be more intense for girls than for boys. Finally, the relationship between worry-emotionality and school anxiety is explored in the present studies in two ways. In the first study, School Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) items were divided further into those reflecting worry and those reflecting emotionality. In the second, worry and emotionality were assessed in an academic testing situation and correlated with each of the five school anxiety factors. Together, these studies constitute an initial evaluation of the usefulness of the worry-emotionality distinction in studying children’s anxiety.
B. STUDY I 1. Method
The hypothesis that girls’ anxiety (particular worry) would increase faster than boys’ with age (grades 3-8) was tested in this study. Homeroom (elementary school) and general science Cjunior high school) classes were selected at random, one for each grade, from public schools in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The 105-item SAQ was given in two parts separated by about three days, during the spring semester. Students were tested in their respective classroom settings. The test was read orally to third and fourth grade students only. Each item was rated on a 1 (“not much” or “very little”) to 5 (“frequently” or “a lot”) scale. Since all of the items in the questionnaire are stated in such a way as to include either the word “worry,” “nervous,” or “bother,” the worry-emotionality distinction seems to have been inadvertently built into the SAQ. If children interpret these words as most adults do, the “worry” questions may be assumed to assess the “cognitive concern” component of anxiety, and questions phrased with the word “nervous” may be assumed to assess the “physiological arousaltension-uneasiness” component of anxiety. “Bother” is an ambiguous term which does not relate clearly to either the worry or emotionality factor, and these questions were therefore analyzed separately. Unfortunately, these three types of items are not equally distributed among the factors. There are no “worry” items on the achievement and recitation anxiety scales and no “bother” items on the latter. 2.
Results
Means and standard deviations are presented by sex and grade level in Table 1 for the different item types and in Table 2 for the school anxiety
52
JOURNAL O F GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY TABLE 1 MEAN ANXIETY SCORESBY GRADELEVEL, SEX. AND ITEM-TYPE
Grade level
N
3 4 5 6
16
17 15 16 24 16
7 8
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Mean 3 4 5 6
16 17
15 16 24 16
7 8
Mean 3 4
16 17 15 16 24 16
5 6
7 8
Mean
Males Mean
SD
91.0 79.06 80.80 84.19 80.21 76.38 81.79
Emotionality 19.76 19.39 18.50 20.93 27.27 16.14 21.69
44.69 36.53 35.07 38.31 33.21 32.19 36.41 52.06 42.18 40.67 47.06 42.00 40.00 43.86
wow
12.87 12.73 8.65 9.10 14.41 7.85 12.22 Bother 13.54 14.57 10.90 12.42 17.82 10.44 14.52
N 13
14 16 15 11 14 13 14 16 15 11
14 13 14 16 15 11 14
Females Mean
SD
89.92 98.57 83.81 96.80 78.82 86.14 89.34
16.21 14.05 15.54 26.14 23.27 23.29 21.32
42.15 43.07 38.65 39.87 35.91 31.00 38.51
8.67 12.90 11.22 15.12 13.19 12.69 13.12
52.15 55.00 45.81 52.73 37.82 42.43 47.98
14.03 9.04 12.25 17.11 11.93 13.42 14.51
factors. Two way analyses of variance were computed to determine grade level and sex differences. Significant main effects for the grade level variable occurred for the worry and bother items (F = 3.55 and 3.58, respectively, 51175 df, p < . O l ) , but not for emotionality. For both worry and bother items, Newman-Keuls comparisons indicate that the third graders scored significantly higher than the seventh and eighth graders. Of the five school anxiety factors, similar significant grade level effects were found for report card anxiety, and failure anxiety (F = 3.44 and 5.42, respectively, 51175 df, p < .01). For the former, third graders scored higher than eighth graders, and for the latter, both third and fourth graders scored significantly higher than seventh and eighth graders. There was also a significant grade level effect on achievement anxiety (F = 2.80, 51175 df,p < .05)which did not fit this general pattern. Newman-Keuls comparisons indicated that these scores rose significantly for sixth graders as compared to the other grades. Significant sex differences (girls scoring higher than boys) were found for emotionality and bother items (F = 5.71 and 3.95, respectively, 11175 df,p
Grand mean
8
7
3 4 5 6
Grand mean
8
7
3 4 5 6
Grade level
13 14 16 15 11 14
16 17 15 16 24 16
N
38.46 47.57 34.31 43.60 32.82 32.43 38.36
45.38 35.12 33.07 38.44 33.54 3.1.94 36.06 8.15 8.26 8.69 11.24 10.35 8.71
41.46 44.29 37.56 41.60 34.36 32.21 38.71
13.99 7.32 11.30 15.04 15.62 14.79 42.39 50.21 40.50 48.27 34.55 37.57 42.55
Females
41.50 38.24 40.48 42.44 37.00 38.13 39.40
10.38 9.02 7.18 8.97 11.06 8.78
42.69 39.18 35.33 38.11 34.29 32.00 36.80
12.34 14.70 10.65 12.11 16.23 10.95
Males
12.83 5.93 9.94 10.72 11.56 11.05
12.27 11.22 9.37 11.83 14.08 10.2 1
SD
Achievement
X
SD
- Failure
-Report card X SD
X
32.85 38.64 32.00 38.00 28.27 31.00 33.68
36.69 28.12 28.07 30.94 32.25 26.31 30.54
X
Test
8.62 6.85 8.79 12.47 10.18 9.22
10.50 10.96 7.35 8.39 14.34 6.09
SD
TABLE 2 SAQ SCALEMEANSAND STANDARDDEVIATIONS BY GRADELEVELAND SEX
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19.31 21.36 19.81 21.00 20.36 20.21 20.35
22.06 16.88 20.27 20.19 18.75 20.19 19.62
4.32 5.09 5.11 8.70 5.79 8.28
:68
5.41 5.83 6.42 6.37
-Recitation SD
X
r
b
a
2 .-
f -
v)
g
3
b
54
JOURNAL O F GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
< .05)and for test anxiety (F = 4.23, 1/175 d j , p < .05). No significant sex-grade level interaction effects were found.
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3. Discussion There was no significant interaction between sex and grade level in this study. Apparently, whatever developmental changes affect girls’ and boys’ anxiety levels differentially either occur before the third grade or after the eighth, or affect some aspect of anxiety not assessed by the School Anxiety Questionnaire. The hypothesis that worry would increase with age, and more so for girls than for boys, was not substantiated. However, the distinctiveness of worry and emotionality was supported by the finding that there were significant decrements with age for worry but not for emotionality, and that there were significant sex differences for emotionality but not for worry. Likewise, report card anxiety and failure anxiety decreased significantly with age, whereas recitation anxiety and test anxiety did not. These findings are generally consistent with those of Dunn (3). Significant sex differences were found only for the test anxiety factor. Thus, the usefulness of the factorial study of school anxiety is demonstrated. Earlier studies reporting higher anxiety scores for girls would appear to hold only for test anxiety p e r se and not to generalize to other types of school anxiety. In addition, this conclusion may apply only to one component of test anxiety, emotionality.
C. 1.
STUDYI1 Method
The second study was designed to investigate further the components of school anxiety and test anxiety, the relationship of these components to one another, and their correlation with academic performance. The 5’s were 1 2 2 eighth grade students (64 female, 58 male; 1 0 1 white, 2 1 black) at a public junior high school in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, each of whom attended a given instructor’s social studies class at some point during the school day. The SAQ was given to intact classes as in Study I, during the spring semester. Approximately one month later, immediately preceding the final examination, a 10-item worry-emotionality questionnaire was administered by the teacher. The items of the questionnaire were the same as those used by Liebert and Morris ( 5 ) , five applying to worry and five to emotionality, responded to on the basis of a 1 to 5 scale. The students’
LARRY W. MORRIS,
55
et al.
grades, recorded in percentages, were an average of the first three nineweek periods of the school year in the social studies class. 2.
Results and Discussion
Pearson product-moment correlations among all possible combinations of variables are presented in Table 3. As expected, measures of school anxiety
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TABLE 3 PEARSON PRODUCT-MOMENT CORRELATIONS FOR ALL VARIABLES (N
Variables Failure anxiety Achievement anxiety Test anxiety Recitation anxiety Worry Emotionality Grades
Report card anxiety
FA
AA
.64** .68**
.78**
TA
= 122)
RA
W
E
.21* .16 -.09
.61** -.32**
-.24*
.59**
.57** .65**
.37**
.SO**
.54** .38** -.44**
.37** .26** -.15
.Sly*
.so** .35** -,07
.46**
.55** .SO** -.18 -
*p < .os. * * p < ,001.
taken in a nonstressful setting were positively related to measures of worry and emotionality taken immediately before a course examination. While nine of 10 correlations of interest were significant, it is obvious that the indices of school anxiety were somewhat more strongly related to worry than to emotionality (with the exception of test anxiety, to which both were strongly related, and recitation anxiety, to which neither was strongly related). The high correlations between the types of school anxiety, especially test anxiety, and worry scores in particular are encouraging. Such multidimensional approaches should be instrumental in solving one of the major problems of anxiety research: i.e. , the inability to predict with confidence a person’s state anxiety reaction in a specific situation from measures of general anxiety. Further, the finding that worry was somewhat more highly related to all areas of school anxiety than was emotionality is consistent with the worry-emotionality distinction, since the areas of the School Anxiety Questionnaire are focused upon consequences of the school situation and worry is assumed to be closely related to this type of concern. Grades were negatively related to all anxiety variables, though only the
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JOURNAL OF GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
correlations with report card anxiety, worry, and emotionality reached conventional significance levels. Since these grades represent performance over three nine-week periods, it is surprising that school anxiety factors did not correlate more highly with such a general performance measure and, conversely, that worry and emotionality, assessed in only one testing situation, were correlated significantly with grades. The finding that worry was somewhat more highly related to grades than was emotionality is consistent with previous studies. It should be noted also that the high correlation between report card anxiety and grades may have been a function of the time of data collection (about two weeks after report cards were issued for the third nine-week period). Thus, students who had received low grades on report cards may have had report card anxiety as a result. Mean scores for each of the dependent variables, along with standard deviations and t ratios comparing males and females for each, are presented in Table 4. Females had significantly higher scores on three of the TABLE 4 MEAN SCORESFOR ALL VARIABLES Males (n = 58) Variables Report card anxiety Failure anxiety Achievement anxiety Test anxiety Recitation anxiety Worry Emotionality Grades
Females (n = 64)
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
31.86
13.05
33.17
11.83
.58
27.64
8.50
30.64
9.42
1.84
33.81 25.72
11.40 9.26
40.89 31.91
12.62 10.60
3.24** 3.41***
19.48 11.22 8.78 74.00
7.24 4.05 3.68 13.85
22.92 12.86 10.22 76.63
7.01 4.03 4.13 10.25
2.66** 2.23* 2.03* 1.20
t
* p < .05. * * p < .01. * * * p < ,001 five types of school anxiety (achievement anxiety, test anxiety, and recitation anxiety) and on both worry and emotionality. As in Study I, the greatest sex difference was for test anxiety. There was no sex difference for grades.
D.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, it appears from the results of these studies that Dunn’s School Anxiety Questionnaire is useful as an assessment device. First, and
LARRY W. MORRIS,
et al.
57
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perhaps most importantly, the test anxiety part of this scale can be used to predict specific test anxiety reactions, and undoubtedly the other school anxiety factors will be demonstrated to have similar capability in future studies. Second, though these five factors are highly intercorrelated, their differential relationships with other variables (performance, sex, and age) indicate that they are not measuring identical constructs. Finally, these results seem to indicate that the worry and emotionality components of anxiety are clearly distinguishable in children’s anxiety, especially when viewed as elements of general school anxiety (Study I).
REFERENCES 1. 2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
DOCTOR,R. M., & ALTMAN,F. Worry and emotionality as components of test anxiety: Replication and further data. Psychol. R e p . , 1969, 24, 563-568. DUNN,J. A. The approach-avoidance paradigm as a model for the analysis of school anxiety. J. Educ. Psychol., 1968, 59, 388-394. . The School Anxiety Questionnaire: Theory, instrument, and summary of results. Paper presented at American Psychological Association, Miami Beach, September, 1970. HAWKES,T . , & KOFF, R. H. Difference in anxiety of private and inner city public elementary school children. Psychol. in Sch., 1970, 7 , 250-259. LIEBERT,R. M., & MORRIS,L. W. Cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety: A distinction and some initial data. Psychol. R e p . , 1967, 20, 975-978. MANLEY,M. J., & ROSEMIER,R. A. Developmental trends in general and test anxiety among junior and senior high school students. J. Genet. Psychol., 1972, 120,219-226. MORRIS,L. W., & LIEBERT,R. M. Effects of anxiety on timed and untimed intelligence tests: Another look. J. Consult. 8 Clin. Psychol., 1969, 33, 240-244. . Relationships of cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety to physiological arousal and academic performance. J. Consult. 6. Clin. Psychol., 1970, 35, 332-337. . Effects of negative feedback, threat of shock, and level of trait anxiety on the arousal of two components of anxiety. J. Counsel. Psychol., 1973,20, 321-326. PATJAS,E. Anxiety associated with school attendance and the grammar school entrance examination. Research Bulletin, Institute of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland, 1968. SARASON, S. B., DAVIDSON,K. S., LIGHTHALL,F. F., WAITE,R. R., & RUEBUSH,B. K. Anxiety in Elementary School Children. New York: Wiley, 1960. SPIEGLER,M. D., MORRIS,L. W., & LIEBERT,R. M. Cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety: Temporal factors. Psychol. R e p . , 1968, 22, 451-456.
Department of Psychology Middle Tennessee State University M u e e e s b o r o , Tennessee 37132
The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vgnt20
Components of School Anxiety: Developmental Trends and Sex Differences a
a
Larry W. Morris , Cynthia S. Finkelstein & William R. Fisher
a
a
Department of Psychology , Middle Tennessee State University , Murfreesboro , Tennessee , 37132 , USA Published online: 04 Sep 2012.
To cite this article: Larry W. Morris , Cynthia S. Finkelstein & William R. Fisher (1976) Components of School Anxiety: Developmental Trends and Sex Differences, The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development, 128:1, 49-57, DOI: 10.1080/00221325.1976.10533971 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221325.1976.10533971
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Downloaded by [Indiana University Libraries] at 14:04 16 March 2015
Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/ page/terms-and-conditions
The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1976, 128,4947,
COMPONENTS O F SCHOOL ANXIETY: DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS AND SEX DIFFERENCES* Middle Tennessee State University
LARRY w. MORRIS, CYNTHIA s. FINKELSTEIN, AND WILLIAMR. FISHER
Downloaded by [Indiana University Libraries] at 14:04 16 March 2015
SUMMARY Dunn's School Anxiety Questionnaire was administered to 104 third through eighth graders (Study I) and 122 eighth graders (Study II). Significant decrements in anxiety with increasing age were found for worry (but not emotionality), report card anxiety, and failure anxiety:In Study I girls scored significantly higher than boys on emotionality (but not worry) and test anxiety. Sex differences were greater in Study 11, girls scoring consistently higher. In Study I1 a worry-emotionality questionnaire administered immediately preceding a final examination correlated highly with School Anxiety Questionnaire scores. Results are taken as generally supportive of the multidimensional approach to the study of school anxiety.
A. INTRODUCTION Generally, researchers have found that girls report more school anxiety than boys (4, 6, 10, 11). It may be that boys have more varied interests and are less dependent on academic achievement for prestige and social recognition or that it is less socially acceptable for boys to admit anxiety. In either case, developmental changes would apbear to be important in determining the nature and extent of school-related anxiety. However, results reported from studies of the effects of age on anxiety level have not been consistent. Dunn (2) reported a trend for adolescents to manifest more anxiety about school than preadolescents. In contrast, a decline in test
* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on August 6, 1974. Copyright, 1976, by The Journal Press. I Studies I and I1 were based on Masters theses submitted by the second and third authors, respectively, in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts degree at Middle Tennessee State University. Requests for reprints should be addressed to the first author at the address shown at the end of this article. 49
Downloaded by [Indiana University Libraries] at 14:04 16 March 2015
50
JOURNAL O F GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
anxiety with age (grades 7-12) was reported by Manley and Rosemier (6) for both male and female S s . Consistent with recent attempts to refine the anxiety construct further by distinguishing among its various components, the studies reported herein represent an attempt to extend knowledge about anxiety trends related to age and sex differences by applying Dunn’s ( 3 ) distinction among five types of school anxiety and Liebert and Morris’ (5) worry-emotionality distinction. The development of the School Anxiety Questionnaire ( 3 ) was based on the assumption that it is more effective to concentrate on relatively discrete, circumscribed, and situationally specific anxiety rather than on general anxiety. The five types of anxiety specified as composing school anxiety are recitation anxiety, test anxiety, report card anxiety, achievement anxiety, and failure anxiety. Studying the school anxiety of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children, Dunn found that test anxiety, failure anxiety, and report card anxiety decreased, achievement anxiety remained constant, and recitation anxiety increased with age. Sex differences were found only on report card anxiety, with girls reporting less than boys. This multidimensional approach seems promising and therefore is extended in the present investigations through exploration of a wider range of age groups. The Liebert-Morris position distinguishes between (a) worry-cognitive concern about the outcome of an approaching or immediately experienced event-and ( b ) emotionality-physiological and affective arousal experienced in the testing situation-as major components of test anxiety. Thus, worry is cognitive activity (e.g., concern, dread) which is consciously experienced. Emotionality is the autonomic, bodily reaction to stress (arousal or activation) and accompanying intensified affective or emotional “feeling” states (e.g., nervousness, tenseness). It has been demonstrated that worry is consistently more negatively related to academic and intelligence test performance than is emotionality (1, 7 , 8). Likewise, these components have been shown to be aroused and maintained by different elements of the testing situation. Worry varies primarily as an inverse function of students’ expected performance (5) and as a function of failure-threat: i.e., negative feedback (9). Emotionality, unrelated to these conditions, was aroused by the threat of electric shock in the latter study, and otherwise is aroused largely by specific test-situation cues involved in academic testing (12). The studies reported herein represent the first attempt to apply the worry-emotionality distinction to children’s school anxiety. It was expected that worry would increase with age,
Downloaded by [Indiana University Libraries] at 14:04 16 March 2015
LARRY W. MORRIS, et al.
51
as students become more aware of the consequences of their academic performance, and that this concern would increase earlier and be more intense for girls than for boys. Finally, the relationship between worry-emotionality and school anxiety is explored in the present studies in two ways. In the first study, School Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) items were divided further into those reflecting worry and those reflecting emotionality. In the second, worry and emotionality were assessed in an academic testing situation and correlated with each of the five school anxiety factors. Together, these studies constitute an initial evaluation of the usefulness of the worry-emotionality distinction in studying children’s anxiety.
B. STUDY I 1. Method
The hypothesis that girls’ anxiety (particular worry) would increase faster than boys’ with age (grades 3-8) was tested in this study. Homeroom (elementary school) and general science Cjunior high school) classes were selected at random, one for each grade, from public schools in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The 105-item SAQ was given in two parts separated by about three days, during the spring semester. Students were tested in their respective classroom settings. The test was read orally to third and fourth grade students only. Each item was rated on a 1 (“not much” or “very little”) to 5 (“frequently” or “a lot”) scale. Since all of the items in the questionnaire are stated in such a way as to include either the word “worry,” “nervous,” or “bother,” the worry-emotionality distinction seems to have been inadvertently built into the SAQ. If children interpret these words as most adults do, the “worry” questions may be assumed to assess the “cognitive concern” component of anxiety, and questions phrased with the word “nervous” may be assumed to assess the “physiological arousaltension-uneasiness” component of anxiety. “Bother” is an ambiguous term which does not relate clearly to either the worry or emotionality factor, and these questions were therefore analyzed separately. Unfortunately, these three types of items are not equally distributed among the factors. There are no “worry” items on the achievement and recitation anxiety scales and no “bother” items on the latter. 2.
Results
Means and standard deviations are presented by sex and grade level in Table 1 for the different item types and in Table 2 for the school anxiety
52
JOURNAL O F GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY TABLE 1 MEAN ANXIETY SCORESBY GRADELEVEL, SEX. AND ITEM-TYPE
Grade level
N
3 4 5 6
16
17 15 16 24 16
7 8
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Mean 3 4 5 6
16 17
15 16 24 16
7 8
Mean 3 4
16 17 15 16 24 16
5 6
7 8
Mean
Males Mean
SD
91.0 79.06 80.80 84.19 80.21 76.38 81.79
Emotionality 19.76 19.39 18.50 20.93 27.27 16.14 21.69
44.69 36.53 35.07 38.31 33.21 32.19 36.41 52.06 42.18 40.67 47.06 42.00 40.00 43.86
wow
12.87 12.73 8.65 9.10 14.41 7.85 12.22 Bother 13.54 14.57 10.90 12.42 17.82 10.44 14.52
N 13
14 16 15 11 14 13 14 16 15 11
14 13 14 16 15 11 14
Females Mean
SD
89.92 98.57 83.81 96.80 78.82 86.14 89.34
16.21 14.05 15.54 26.14 23.27 23.29 21.32
42.15 43.07 38.65 39.87 35.91 31.00 38.51
8.67 12.90 11.22 15.12 13.19 12.69 13.12
52.15 55.00 45.81 52.73 37.82 42.43 47.98
14.03 9.04 12.25 17.11 11.93 13.42 14.51
factors. Two way analyses of variance were computed to determine grade level and sex differences. Significant main effects for the grade level variable occurred for the worry and bother items (F = 3.55 and 3.58, respectively, 51175 df, p < . O l ) , but not for emotionality. For both worry and bother items, Newman-Keuls comparisons indicate that the third graders scored significantly higher than the seventh and eighth graders. Of the five school anxiety factors, similar significant grade level effects were found for report card anxiety, and failure anxiety (F = 3.44 and 5.42, respectively, 51175 df, p < .01). For the former, third graders scored higher than eighth graders, and for the latter, both third and fourth graders scored significantly higher than seventh and eighth graders. There was also a significant grade level effect on achievement anxiety (F = 2.80, 51175 df,p < .05)which did not fit this general pattern. Newman-Keuls comparisons indicated that these scores rose significantly for sixth graders as compared to the other grades. Significant sex differences (girls scoring higher than boys) were found for emotionality and bother items (F = 5.71 and 3.95, respectively, 11175 df,p
Grand mean
8
7
3 4 5 6
Grand mean
8
7
3 4 5 6
Grade level
13 14 16 15 11 14
16 17 15 16 24 16
N
38.46 47.57 34.31 43.60 32.82 32.43 38.36
45.38 35.12 33.07 38.44 33.54 3.1.94 36.06 8.15 8.26 8.69 11.24 10.35 8.71
41.46 44.29 37.56 41.60 34.36 32.21 38.71
13.99 7.32 11.30 15.04 15.62 14.79 42.39 50.21 40.50 48.27 34.55 37.57 42.55
Females
41.50 38.24 40.48 42.44 37.00 38.13 39.40
10.38 9.02 7.18 8.97 11.06 8.78
42.69 39.18 35.33 38.11 34.29 32.00 36.80
12.34 14.70 10.65 12.11 16.23 10.95
Males
12.83 5.93 9.94 10.72 11.56 11.05
12.27 11.22 9.37 11.83 14.08 10.2 1
SD
Achievement
X
SD
- Failure
-Report card X SD
X
32.85 38.64 32.00 38.00 28.27 31.00 33.68
36.69 28.12 28.07 30.94 32.25 26.31 30.54
X
Test
8.62 6.85 8.79 12.47 10.18 9.22
10.50 10.96 7.35 8.39 14.34 6.09
SD
TABLE 2 SAQ SCALEMEANSAND STANDARDDEVIATIONS BY GRADELEVELAND SEX
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19.31 21.36 19.81 21.00 20.36 20.21 20.35
22.06 16.88 20.27 20.19 18.75 20.19 19.62
4.32 5.09 5.11 8.70 5.79 8.28
:68
5.41 5.83 6.42 6.37
-Recitation SD
X
r
b
a
2 .-
f -
v)
g
3
b
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JOURNAL O F GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
< .05)and for test anxiety (F = 4.23, 1/175 d j , p < .05). No significant sex-grade level interaction effects were found.
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3. Discussion There was no significant interaction between sex and grade level in this study. Apparently, whatever developmental changes affect girls’ and boys’ anxiety levels differentially either occur before the third grade or after the eighth, or affect some aspect of anxiety not assessed by the School Anxiety Questionnaire. The hypothesis that worry would increase with age, and more so for girls than for boys, was not substantiated. However, the distinctiveness of worry and emotionality was supported by the finding that there were significant decrements with age for worry but not for emotionality, and that there were significant sex differences for emotionality but not for worry. Likewise, report card anxiety and failure anxiety decreased significantly with age, whereas recitation anxiety and test anxiety did not. These findings are generally consistent with those of Dunn (3). Significant sex differences were found only for the test anxiety factor. Thus, the usefulness of the factorial study of school anxiety is demonstrated. Earlier studies reporting higher anxiety scores for girls would appear to hold only for test anxiety p e r se and not to generalize to other types of school anxiety. In addition, this conclusion may apply only to one component of test anxiety, emotionality.
C. 1.
STUDYI1 Method
The second study was designed to investigate further the components of school anxiety and test anxiety, the relationship of these components to one another, and their correlation with academic performance. The 5’s were 1 2 2 eighth grade students (64 female, 58 male; 1 0 1 white, 2 1 black) at a public junior high school in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, each of whom attended a given instructor’s social studies class at some point during the school day. The SAQ was given to intact classes as in Study I, during the spring semester. Approximately one month later, immediately preceding the final examination, a 10-item worry-emotionality questionnaire was administered by the teacher. The items of the questionnaire were the same as those used by Liebert and Morris ( 5 ) , five applying to worry and five to emotionality, responded to on the basis of a 1 to 5 scale. The students’
LARRY W. MORRIS,
55
et al.
grades, recorded in percentages, were an average of the first three nineweek periods of the school year in the social studies class. 2.
Results and Discussion
Pearson product-moment correlations among all possible combinations of variables are presented in Table 3. As expected, measures of school anxiety
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TABLE 3 PEARSON PRODUCT-MOMENT CORRELATIONS FOR ALL VARIABLES (N
Variables Failure anxiety Achievement anxiety Test anxiety Recitation anxiety Worry Emotionality Grades
Report card anxiety
FA
AA
.64** .68**
.78**
TA
= 122)
RA
W
E
.21* .16 -.09
.61** -.32**
-.24*
.59**
.57** .65**
.37**
.SO**
.54** .38** -.44**
.37** .26** -.15
.Sly*
.so** .35** -,07
.46**
.55** .SO** -.18 -
*p < .os. * * p < ,001.
taken in a nonstressful setting were positively related to measures of worry and emotionality taken immediately before a course examination. While nine of 10 correlations of interest were significant, it is obvious that the indices of school anxiety were somewhat more strongly related to worry than to emotionality (with the exception of test anxiety, to which both were strongly related, and recitation anxiety, to which neither was strongly related). The high correlations between the types of school anxiety, especially test anxiety, and worry scores in particular are encouraging. Such multidimensional approaches should be instrumental in solving one of the major problems of anxiety research: i.e. , the inability to predict with confidence a person’s state anxiety reaction in a specific situation from measures of general anxiety. Further, the finding that worry was somewhat more highly related to all areas of school anxiety than was emotionality is consistent with the worry-emotionality distinction, since the areas of the School Anxiety Questionnaire are focused upon consequences of the school situation and worry is assumed to be closely related to this type of concern. Grades were negatively related to all anxiety variables, though only the
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JOURNAL OF GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY
correlations with report card anxiety, worry, and emotionality reached conventional significance levels. Since these grades represent performance over three nine-week periods, it is surprising that school anxiety factors did not correlate more highly with such a general performance measure and, conversely, that worry and emotionality, assessed in only one testing situation, were correlated significantly with grades. The finding that worry was somewhat more highly related to grades than was emotionality is consistent with previous studies. It should be noted also that the high correlation between report card anxiety and grades may have been a function of the time of data collection (about two weeks after report cards were issued for the third nine-week period). Thus, students who had received low grades on report cards may have had report card anxiety as a result. Mean scores for each of the dependent variables, along with standard deviations and t ratios comparing males and females for each, are presented in Table 4. Females had significantly higher scores on three of the TABLE 4 MEAN SCORESFOR ALL VARIABLES Males (n = 58) Variables Report card anxiety Failure anxiety Achievement anxiety Test anxiety Recitation anxiety Worry Emotionality Grades
Females (n = 64)
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
31.86
13.05
33.17
11.83
.58
27.64
8.50
30.64
9.42
1.84
33.81 25.72
11.40 9.26
40.89 31.91
12.62 10.60
3.24** 3.41***
19.48 11.22 8.78 74.00
7.24 4.05 3.68 13.85
22.92 12.86 10.22 76.63
7.01 4.03 4.13 10.25
2.66** 2.23* 2.03* 1.20
t
* p < .05. * * p < .01. * * * p < ,001 five types of school anxiety (achievement anxiety, test anxiety, and recitation anxiety) and on both worry and emotionality. As in Study I, the greatest sex difference was for test anxiety. There was no sex difference for grades.
D.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, it appears from the results of these studies that Dunn’s School Anxiety Questionnaire is useful as an assessment device. First, and
LARRY W. MORRIS,
et al.
57
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perhaps most importantly, the test anxiety part of this scale can be used to predict specific test anxiety reactions, and undoubtedly the other school anxiety factors will be demonstrated to have similar capability in future studies. Second, though these five factors are highly intercorrelated, their differential relationships with other variables (performance, sex, and age) indicate that they are not measuring identical constructs. Finally, these results seem to indicate that the worry and emotionality components of anxiety are clearly distinguishable in children’s anxiety, especially when viewed as elements of general school anxiety (Study I).
REFERENCES 1. 2.
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5. 6.
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DOCTOR,R. M., & ALTMAN,F. Worry and emotionality as components of test anxiety: Replication and further data. Psychol. R e p . , 1969, 24, 563-568. DUNN,J. A. The approach-avoidance paradigm as a model for the analysis of school anxiety. J. Educ. Psychol., 1968, 59, 388-394. . The School Anxiety Questionnaire: Theory, instrument, and summary of results. Paper presented at American Psychological Association, Miami Beach, September, 1970. HAWKES,T . , & KOFF, R. H. Difference in anxiety of private and inner city public elementary school children. Psychol. in Sch., 1970, 7 , 250-259. LIEBERT,R. M., & MORRIS,L. W. Cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety: A distinction and some initial data. Psychol. R e p . , 1967, 20, 975-978. MANLEY,M. J., & ROSEMIER,R. A. Developmental trends in general and test anxiety among junior and senior high school students. J. Genet. Psychol., 1972, 120,219-226. MORRIS,L. W., & LIEBERT,R. M. Effects of anxiety on timed and untimed intelligence tests: Another look. J. Consult. 8 Clin. Psychol., 1969, 33, 240-244. . Relationships of cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety to physiological arousal and academic performance. J. Consult. 6. Clin. Psychol., 1970, 35, 332-337. . Effects of negative feedback, threat of shock, and level of trait anxiety on the arousal of two components of anxiety. J. Counsel. Psychol., 1973,20, 321-326. PATJAS,E. Anxiety associated with school attendance and the grammar school entrance examination. Research Bulletin, Institute of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland, 1968. SARASON, S. B., DAVIDSON,K. S., LIGHTHALL,F. F., WAITE,R. R., & RUEBUSH,B. K. Anxiety in Elementary School Children. New York: Wiley, 1960. SPIEGLER,M. D., MORRIS,L. W., & LIEBERT,R. M. Cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety: Temporal factors. Psychol. R e p . , 1968, 22, 451-456.
Department of Psychology Middle Tennessee State University M u e e e s b o r o , Tennessee 37132
