Effects of Facilitating and Debilitating Anxiety on Performance and Study Effort in Mastery-Based and Traditional Courses

Abstract

To explore a possible interaction of testing method with anxiety, Alpert and Haber's Achievement Anxiety Test was administered to 103 male and 94 female undergraduates in biology courses which utilized traditional or mastery-based testing systems. As predicted, students high in debilitating anxiety attained lower grades than students low in debilitating anxiety; highly facilitating anxiety was associated with higher grades than was low facilitating anxiety, especially in the traditionally taught sections. The results support the Alpert-Haber conception of test anxiety and suggest an inverted-U relationship between grades and test anxiety. Further analysis showed that, although test anxiety did not affect effort in study, females studied more in the mastery-based course than in the traditional course. Males' effort was not affected by testing method.