Associations between Students' Test Preparation Strategies and Test Anxiety: Gender, Age, and Parents' Level of Education as Control Variables

Although students' test preparation tendencies are related to their test-taking confidence, empirical evidence on how students' test preparation strategies relate to their test anxiety is still lacking. Framed within the skills deficit model, we examined the associations between students' test preparation strategies (cognitive, metacognitive, and social preparation strategies) and their test anxiety (worry, cognitive, tension, and physiological test anxiety). Students' gender, age, and parents' level of education served as control variables. Participants were 248 students in two randomly selected secondary schools in Awka, Anambra state, Nigeria. Survey questionnaires were used for data collection. Major findings revealed that cognitive and metacognitive test preparation strategies significantly predicted worry and physiological indicators components of test anxiety, respectively. When the sociodemographic variables were controlled, the Delta R-2 was significant only in the worry and physiological subscale. We concluded that test preparation strategies could be more associated with the worry subscale than the affective-physiological subscale. Furthermore, test preparation strategies involving monitoring and regulation could be associated to physiological indicators of test anxiety.