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Gender Difference of Chinese High School Students’ Math Anxiety: The Effects of Self-Esteem, Test Anxiety and General Anxiety

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Abstract

The present study aimed to explore gender differences in, and the effects of, self-esteem on math anxiety. A total of 751 (450 young women) junior and senior high school students (12–18 years-old) from China were recruited and requested to report their math anxiety, self-esteem, control beliefs, test anxiety, and general anxiety. Results revealed that young women showed a higher level of math anxiety compared with young men; no gender difference was found in math performance. Further, the pathway from self-esteem to math anxiety was different for young men and young women. For young men, apart from a direct effect on math anxiety, self-esteem had an indirect effect on math anxiety as mediated by control beliefs, test anxiety, and general anxiety. For young women, self-esteem only had an indirect effect on math anxiety as mediated by test anxiety and general anxiety. Our results indicated that improving self-esteem, test anxiety and general anxiety would be helpful for students’ math anxiety.

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Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31871120).

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  1. Fang Xie and Ziqiang Xin contributedequally to this paper

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  1. Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, No. 2 of Tiansheng street, Chongqing, China

    Fang Xie, Xu Chen & Li Zhang

  2. School of Sociology and Psychology, Central University of Finance and Economics, No. 39 of Xueyuannan road, Beijing, China

    Ziqiang Xin & Li Zhang

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Fang Xie and Ziqiang Xin contributed equally to this paper, as Ziqiang Xin gave suggestion to this paper’s revision as well as the language proofreading. There is no other conflict exists.

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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards.

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Xie, F., Xin, Z., Chen, X. et al. Gender Difference of Chinese High School Students’ Math Anxiety: The Effects of Self-Esteem, Test Anxiety and General Anxiety. Sex Roles 81, 235–244 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-0982-9

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