Relationship between test anxiety and coping style in senior high school students

  Objective   To explore the relationship between test anxiety and coping style in senior high school students.

  Methods   538 senior high school students of grade one were investigated by Test Anxiety Scale(TAS), Coping

  Methods   Inventory(CMI)and Trait Coping strategy Qusetionnaire(TCSQ)in a senior high school in Shandong province.

  Results   The prevalence of test anxiety among all the surveyed students was 65.20%.The self-blaming, fantasy, withedrawing or rationalization factor score of CMIand the passive coping strategy score of TCSQin students with test anxiety were hig her or significantly higher than those of students without test anx iety(P < 0.05 or P < 0.001), while the consequence of the active coping strategy score of TCSQ was on the contrary(P < 0.05).The total score of TASwas positively related or obviously positively related to the selflaming, fantasy or rationalization factor score of CMIand the passive coping strategy score of TCSQ(P < 0.05 or P < 0.001), while the relation was negative between the total score of TA Sand the active coping strategy score of TCSQ(P < 0.001).

  Conclusion   Test anxiety was related to coping style in senior high school students.When students with test anxiety was dealing with stress events such as exams, they used to adoptimmature coping methods such as self-blaming, fantasy or withdraw ing, which were more apparent in boys than those in girls.As the above, students with test anxiety prefered to use active coping strategy, while students without test anxiety would like to use passive coping strategy.