Investigation of the relationship between exam anxiety levels of 8th-grade students preparing for LGS and attitudes to physical education lesson (Burdur province example)

This study is conducted to examine the relationship between the test anxiety levels of 8th grade students preparing for LGS and their attitudes towards physical education lessons. The research is a descriptive research based on the relational analysis technique and quantitative research methods were used in the research. In the 2022-2023 academic year, the students who will enter the LGS at secondary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the province of Burdur, constitute the participants of this research. The sample of the study consists of 445 students. "Westside Exam Anxiety Scale" developed by Driscoll (2007) and adapted into Turkish by Totan and Yavuz (2009) and "Physical Education Attitude Scale" developed by Güllü and Güçlü (2009) were used as data collection tools. SPSS 21.0 program was used for the analysis of the data collected in the research. It was determined that the data showed normal distribution and therefore parametric tests were applied. For comparisons between groups, independent sample T test was used for pairwise comparisons, One Way Anova test for multiple comparisons, and Tukey test as post hoc test. According to the results of the research, statistically significant differences were found between the test anxiety levels of the students and their physical education attitude levels according to the variables of gender, being an active licensed athlete, and family monthly income level. There were no statistically significant differences between students' test anxiety levels and physical education attitude levels, depending on whether they took the LGS exam or not and the place of residence. The Pearson correlation coefficient, which was obtained to determine the relationship between test anxiety and their attitudes towards physical education lesson, was examined, and according to the results obtained, there was no significant relationship between the test anxiety levels of the students participating in the research and their attitudes towards physical education lesson. As a result, according to the current research, it can be concluded that the variables of gender, being an active licensed athlete and family monthly income are the determinants of students' test anxiety levels and physical education lesson attitudes. Keywords: Exam Anxiety, Physical Education, Attitude, Student