[The relationship between test anxiety and personality, self-esteem in grade one senior high students].
OBJECTIVE
To explore the relationship between test anxiety and personality, self-esteem in grade one senior high school students.


METHODS
Totally 538 senior high school students of grade one were investigated by Test Anxiety Scale (TAS), Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and Self-Esteem Scale (SES) in a Senior High School in Shandong Province.


RESULTS
The prevalence of test anxiety among all the surveyed students was rated 65.2%. The Psychoticism (P) (51.60 +/- 9.66) or Neuroticism (N) (51.57 +/- 10.75) factor score of EPQ in students with test anxiety was significantly higher than that in students without test anxiety (48.07 +/- 8.62, 45.65 +/- 10.14) (P < 0.001), while the Extroversion or Introversion (E) score (50.76 +/- 11.09) was on the contrary (53.68 +/- 11.60) (P < 0.01). The total score of TAS was significantly positively related to the P (r = 0.14) and N (r = 0.36) factor score and significantly negatively related to the E factor score of EPQ (r = -0.15) (P < 0.001). The prevalence of test anxiety in introversive students (72.3%) was higher than that in extroversive students (53.2%) (P < 0.05), and that in students with unstable emotion (81.4%) and in students with apparent psychoticism (84.1%) were also higher than that in those with stable emotion (41.0%) and in those without psychoticism (57.7%) (P < 0.01). The total score of SES in students with test anxiety (29.12 +/- 4.41) was significantly lower than that in students without test anxiety (30.29 +/- 4.25) (P < 0.01). The total score of TAS was significantly negatively related to the total score of SES (r = -0.23) (P < 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
Test anxiety should be related to the personality and self-esteem, and the prevalence of test anxiety in introversive, unstable emotional, apparent psychoticism or low self-esteem students should be higher.
Liu
Jin-tong
JT
Mental Health Institute, Shandong University School of Medicine, Ji'nan 250014, China.
Meng
Xian-peng
XP
Xu
Qing-zhi
QZ
D000293:Adolescent; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D002681:China; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D012649:Self Concept; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D013732:Test Anxiety Scale / Q000706:statistics & numerical data