Examining 4th grade students' mathematics anxiety according to some psycho - social variables

The purpose of this study is to determine if the students' Math anxiety changed significantly according to factors gender, the education of the parents, parents' jobs, socio-economic situtaion of the family, the number of siblings, whether or not they like Math, whether or not they take private Math lessons, parents' support, their perception of success, whether or not they have their own room, the interest of the parents on Math and last year's Math grades.The population of the research is formed by total 5741 the fourth grade students studiyng during 2014-2015 education year at the primary schools in Bornova/Izmir. The sample of the research is formed by total 351 fourth grade students which consisted of 182 girls and 169 boys from 8 different primary schools chosen with random cluster sample method in the same area. The Personal Information Form, which is developed by the researcher in order to determine students' psycho-social characteristics and Maths Anxiety Scale (MAS) for elementary students in order to determine students' Math anxiety levels were used in this research as data collecting tools. Analysis on research data were made in silico using packaged software SPSS 15.0. t-test, F test, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test were used whilst analysing the data. According to the statistical analysis of the obtained data, it is settled that the students' Math anxiety levels show significant difference according to parents' education, whether or not they like Math, their perception of success and last year's Math grades. The students' Math anxiety levels do not show significant difference according to gender, parents' jobs, the socio-economic levels of the families, the number of siblings, whether or not they take private Math lessons, parents' support, whether or not they have their own room and the interest the parents have on Math. Key Words: Anxiety, Math Anxiety, Primary School, Fourth Grade, Student