The impact of cognitive and affective components of test anxiety on the high-stakes exam performance in 12th grade students

OpenAlex İngilizce

The high-stakes exams are administered to the candidates to determine their placement into university programs. One of the variables that can influence the performance of high-stake exams is test anxiety. The current study aimed to examine the associations between the cognitive and affective components of test anxiety with the performance of the high-stakes exam (University Entrance Exam [UEE}) in low-achiever, mid-achiever, and high-achiever groups after controlling for gender. The study participants were 264 12th-grade students from schools representing low-, mid-, and high-achievement groups. The findings showed that the cognitive and affective components of test anxiety did not account significantly for the variance of test performance on the UEE controlling for gender in the three groups. However, test anxiety's cognitive and emotional components had negative significant but weak relationships with test performance in only the high-achiever group. Appropriate implications for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers are discussed.