Effects of acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy based psychoeducation programs on test anxiety

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) based psychoeducational program on test anxiety of high school senior students and compare to effectiveness of traditional CBT. Study was conducted in a pre-experimental design. Short Symptom Inventory, Test Anxiety Inventory, Avoidance and Fusion Scale Youth-8 and Automatic Thoughts Scale were used as data collection tools. Participants meeting the inclusion criteria were assigned to three groups as ACT, CBT and control group. ACT group received seven session and CBT group received eight session psychoeducational intervention while control group received no intervention. The results of the study showed that; both ACT and CBT are effective in reducing students' test anxiety and this effect maintained at 1 and 3 month follow up. However, it was seen there was a significant decrease in avoidance and fusion levels of the participants of the ACT group and automatic thoughts frequency of CBT group. Although the research findings don't allow strong cause-effect relationships to be established due to the inability to randomly assign subjects to groups; as a result, it provides important data that ACT, which is a new approach compared to traditional CBT; as effective as CBT that can be used in reducing students' test anxiety.