Relationship between personality traits, self-efficacy and Internal locus of control with test anxiety among students

Test anxiety is an unpleasant experience of anxiety for the individual that occur in exam or assessment situation. The present study is designed to investigate the relationship between personality characteristics, self-efficacy, locus of control and test anxiety. Statistical community included high school students of Abdanan city and 147 students were selected through random sampling method. In order to obtain the required data, four questionnaires were utilized: short form of NEO Personality Characteristics Inventory (Costa & McCrae: 1992), General Self-Efficacy Scale (Sherer et al: 1982) , Locus of Control scale(Rotters: 1966) and Test Anxiety scale( Sarason: 1975). For analysis of data, Pearson correlation coefficient, multivariant regression analysis and the Cronbach's alpha method for calculating reliability coefficient were used. The results showed there was a significant positive correlation between test anxiety and neuroticism(p<0.001) and were significant negative relationship between extroversion(p<0.025), agreeableness(p<0.835), conscientiousness (p<0.0001) and test anxiety among students. Also there was a significant negative correlation between self-efficacy(p<0.001) and internal locus of control(p<0.017) and test anxiety. Therefor according to the findings, it seems that students who are more neurotic, experience high test anxiety while students who are more extrovert, more agreeable and more conscientious experience low test anxiety. In addition level of self-efficacy and beliefs of internal locus of control among students can predict the level of test anxiety.

کلیدواژه ها:

test anxiety ، personality characteristics ، self-efficacy ، locus of control