Relationship between Mathematics Anxiety and Multiple Intelligences Among Rural and Suburban Sixth Grade Students

Research indicates that mathematics anxiety interferes with solving math problems in everyday life as well as academic situations. In classrooms across the country, educators have utilized different methods to help students alleviate their irrational fears of completing even basic math problems. Critical constructivist educators have utilized Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory in their mathematics classrooms to help learners reach answers using their own methods, and some have even discussed MI theory as a means to help reduce math anxiety. The purpose of this quantitative method study was to examine the relationship among mathematics anxiety, gender, and dominant multiple intelligences of rural and suburban sixth grade math students who attended a middle school located in West Virginia to see whether math anxiety could be predicted based on dominant multiple intelligences. This quantitative study examined the relationship among gender and dominant multiple intelligences and students' levels of mathematics anxiety. Two questionnaires were used to determine level of math anxiety and dominant multiple intelligences with a population of 163 sixth grade students in a rural suburban school in West Virginia. Using an ANOVA, it was determined that math anxiety was not predicted based on primary multiple intelligence F(17, 145) = .810, p = .679. The regression model also showed that dominant intelligence and gender were not significant predictors of math anxiety. However, the ANOVA revealed there was a significant difference between the genders in math anxiety F(1, 146) = 5.950, p = .016. Cohen's d was used to estimate the effect size and resulted in a power analysis explaining the impact the low N had on the statistical results. While the lack of statistical power impacted results of the analysis, relationships between gender, math anxiety, and multiple intelligences. Data indicates that gender has a significant impact on math anxiety. However, data revealed the need for further study to determine the relationship between math anxiety and a person's dominant intelligence. Recommendations are that studies are conducted with a larger sample and that gender not be used as an independent variable.