Assessment Standard Of Test Anxiety Inventory In Middle School Students And Its Reliability And Validity Studies

Objectives: To compare the detecting rates of various test anxiety degrees according to different assessment standards and to make out assessment standard of TAI and to evaluate its applications in Changsha middle school students. What's more to study test anxiety in them.Methods: 3680 students in grade 7 to 9 from 5 middle schools were administered TAI in the unit of class two weeks before middle-term examinations. And two classes were chosen randomly to be given TAS and again other two STAI. The inventories were handed in soon after the students had finished them according to the inventory's manuals .A week later another one class of the total was chosen randomly to be measured with TAI again.Results: Test anxiety can be divided into 4 levels varied from normal, slight, moderate to serious and a total of 5% students showed at least slight test anxiety. TAI Chinese version showed excellent reliability and validity, its again reliability were 0.873, 0.761 and 0.817 respectively, Cronbach a were 0.909, 0.846 and 0.817 respectively. Validities were 0.764, 0.621 and 0.768 respectively when using TAS as validity standard, and correlations of TAI and STAI scales were significant. Goodness of Fit Statistics of proving factors analysis was sound, correlation of TAI/W and TAI/E was as high as 0.92. Test anxiety level among grades was characterized as "low—much lower—high", that was, Grade 9 showed the highest test anxiety and grade 7 much lower while grade 8 the lowest. Female students got significantly higher scores in total and emotionality scales of TAI than male students did. Students from key schools showed significantly higher test anxiety than those from ordinary schools. And significant differences existed between different schools.Conclusions: middle school students' test anxiety norm in Changsha region has been built up; the test anxiety levels are generally low. The detection rates of various test anxiety degrees decrease while the assessment standards turn strict. Test anxiety levels of Grade 9 are significantly higher than that of grade 7 and grade 8. Significant differences lie between boys and girls and between different schools. TAI Chinese version is suitable for evaluating and studying the test anxiety of middle school students in Changsha.