A Longitudinal Study Of The Relationship Between Test Anxiety In Adolescent Perfectionism

Every students are requested to take a large amount of exams,various forms of exams run through student's entire learning career,and the test anxiety that accompanies the exam is a frequent mental problem among student.High level test anxiety will affect students' test performance,which is that they cannot play their true level in the test,and it will also have a serious adverse effect on students' physical and mental health.Hence test anxiety has become one of the most crucial topics in the field of middle school students' psychological health.Perfectionism is an overall negative personality construct.Researchers suggested that perfectionism may be described along two primary dimensions in general.One dimension is named as negative perfectionism.Individuals with high levels of negative perfectionism usually treat themselves very strict and set unrealistic high goals.Negative perfectionism is associated with a mass of negative psychological and emotional problems.Positive perfectionism is a relatively helpful dimension with the main characteristics of pursuing order and setting reasonable goals.Sense of coherence is a positive psychological construct,people with high level of sense of coherence possess pervasive,enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that Individuals with a high level of sense of coherence feel that the external testing tasks are comprehensible manageable,understandable,and confident in solving these problems.Sense of coherence is negatively related to many negative emotional problems,including clinical anxiety or even depression.Sense of coherence also helps to promote physical health of individuals.The complicated associations between perfectionism and test anxiety have been tested by several researchers,but few studies have proved the inner mechanism of perfectionism and test anxiety.Apart from this,there has never been a longitudinal study taking test anxiety as the dependent variable,sense of coherence(SOC)as the mediation variable,and perfectionism as the independent variable,this study tested the relationship between these three factors,and attempts to explore the predictive effect of perfectionism on test anxiety,and whether sense of coherence plays a meditation role between this two factors.Longitudinal tracking design was adopted to explore the relationship between test anxiety and perfectionism and the meditation role of sense of coherence.The present study surveyed three middle schools students in xi'an,Shaanxi province three times in one semester using the Test Anxiety Scale,Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale and Sense of Coherence Scale.The test time was one week after the beginning of the semester,one week before the mid-term exam and one week before the final exam.Correlation analysis,variance test and longitudinal mediation test were performed using SPSS20.0 and AMOS21.0.The following conclusions have been drawn:1.The overall level of students' test anxiety has increased before important exams during one semester.2.Negative perfectionism can significantly predict test anxiety,while positive perfectionism cannot significantly predict test anxiety.3.Negative perfectionism can indirectly predict test anxiety through sense of coherence,which plays a meditation role between test anxiety and negative perfectionism.