A study on the relationship between exam anxiety and religious coping among Syrian students

Throughout the history, asylum and migration movements have always been experienced for different reasons. In 2011, a new wave of immigration was added to these migration movements that would affect the lives of millions of people as a result of the civil war in Syria. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the test anxiety and religious coping of the Syrian refugee students attending our school as a result of this migration wave. The research was conducted in 2017 with 200 Syrian refugee students selected from 58 secondary school students and 142 high school students in Bursa. In order to obtain data, Personal Information Form, Revised Exam Anxiety Scale developed by Benson and El-Zahhar and Brief Religious Coping Scale developed by Pargament were used in the study. As a result of the necessary statistical analyzes performed with SPSS v.21 program, a positive significant relationship was found between the Test Anxiety and Positive Religious Coping and Negative Religious Coping levels of the Syrian students. In addition, a significant difference was found between exam anxiety and gender, age, education level and mother education level. According to this, the average scores of the test anxiety scores of girls are higher than boys, 15-18 age group's scores are higher than 11-14 age group, high school students' scores are higher than secondary school students and the students' scores whose mothers are graduate of secondary school and high school are higher from the others whose mothers are graduate of primary school and university were significantly higher. A significant difference was also found between religious coping and age and mother education level. Accordingly, the positive religious coping averages of 15-18 age group is higher than 11-14 age group students and the student's coping averages whose mother's are graduates of secondary school, high school and university are higher than the students whose mother's are primary school graduates.