Role of academic self-efficacy in moderating the relation between task importance and test anxiety

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Abstract

Emphasizing task importance, which is regarded as a way of motivating engaged behavior, may increase an individual's anxiety. The present research investigated whether academic self-efficacy could moderate the maladaptive relation between task importance and test anxiety. 1978 and 1670 Grade 9 Singaporean students participated in a survey related to their learning experience and motivational processes in math and English respectively. Results from both samples showed convergent findings that high levels of task importance were related to high levels of test anxiety, whereas high levels of academic self-efficacy were related to low levels of test anxiety. Most importantly, academic self-efficacy moderated the relation between task importance and test anxiety—the maladaptive relation between task importance and test anxiety was significantly weaker when academic self-efficacy was higher. Implications of findings are discussed.

Section snippets

Test anxiety

Test anxiety refers to a situation-specific form of anxiety that accompanies concern about possible negative consequences or poor performance on an examination (Spielberger and Vagg, 1995, Zeidner and Matthews, 2005). Recent research has treated test anxiety as a multi-dimensional construct and has generally focused on two major components—worry and emotionality (Bonaccio and Reeve, 2010, Pintrich et al., 1993, Spielberger and Vagg, 1995). Worry refers to negative thought that disrupts

Task importance as an antecedent to test anxiety

In the task value literature, task importance is defined as an individual's perceived importance and usefulness of the task. Task value includes three components, i.e. interest, importance and usefulness (Eccles-Parsons et al., 1983). In recent empirical work, Eccles et al. (Durik et al., 2006, Simpkins et al., 2006) separated interest (the intrinsic component of task value) from importance and usefulness (the extrinsic component of task value). They merged the items for importance and

Self-efficacy as a moderator

One self-belief construct that has been shown to influence test anxiety is self-efficacy, which refers to individuals' beliefs that they have the ability to succeed at a specific task (Bandura, 1997). According to Bandura, self-efficacy constitutes the key factor of human agency and a powerful resource in protecting persons from psychological strains. It also affects how the potential threats are perceived. Bandura postulated the important roles of both threatening events and self-efficacy in

Summary of research hypotheses

Given our focus on how task importance and academic self-efficacy operated together in predicting test anxiety, our hypotheses were framed in terms of model-based regression hypotheses. Specifically, we hypothesized that: (a) task importance would be a positive predictor of test anxiety, controlling for academic self-efficacy and their interaction; (b) academic self-efficacy would be a negative predictor of test anxiety, controlling for task importance and their interaction; and (c) academic

Sampling design and participants

Low statistical power to detect interaction effects, especially in the presence of measurement error, has been an issue of great concern (Aiken and West, 1991, Cohen et al., 2003, McClelland and Judd, 1993, Whisman and McClelland, 2005). Whisman and McClelland (2005) recommended that more than 1000 participants may be necessary for having adequate power to detect interaction with small effect size. Therefore, consideration of sampling design and sample size are especially important in testing

Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations

Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations among the variables used in this study are presented in Table 1. As shown in the table, academic self-efficacy was negatively correlated with test anxiety, whereas task importance was not significantly related to test anxiety. The correlation should be interpreted with caution given the possible moderated relations among the variables. Therefore, theory-driven regression analyses were conducted to test the main effects as well as the

Discussion

The main purpose of the present study was to examine how academic self-efficacy beliefs moderate the maladaptive relation between task importance and test anxiety. Specifically, we used multiple regression analysis to test the predictive relations of task importance, academic self-efficacy and their interaction on test anxiety.

Conclusions

Task importance is often regarded as an important motivator of students' learning. This study demonstrates, however, that it may increase students' anxiety levels when their academic self-efficacy is low. Since deemphasizing the importance of academic tasks is not a viable solution, strengthening students' efficacy beliefs may be a more promising approach. On a more general level, our work suggests that in order to understand the complex patterns of relations in students' motivational

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Singapore Ministry of Education. Any opinions findings, and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the Singapore Ministry of Education.

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    Both authors contributed equally to this paper.

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