Control Antecedents and Achievement Effects of Test Anxiety Components: An Intra-Individual Approach

Although test anxiety constitutes of multiple components (cognitive, affective, motivational, physiological), and some findings suggest that there might be differences regarding their control antecedents and effects on performance, previous studies largely neglected examining them separately and for convenience, often assessed anxiety using single-items. Therefore, this intra-individual study investigated the different test anxiety components in N=137 8th graders to examine the relative impact of the anxiety components in the mediating mechanism linking control and performance, and determine which component is underlying single-item anxiety measures. As expected, control was negatively related to all components, and the components differed in their relative impact on performance, with the cognitive component being central for this outcome. Furthermore, single-items seem to assess specifically the affective component.