An investigation of senior high school students' cognitive constructions of themselves and success in terms of text anxiety

This study aims to reveal the senior high school students' cognitive constructions of themselves and successin terms of test anxiety. On the one hand it is a multiple-quantitative case analysis character because the study requires an investigation at phenomenon level, on theother hand it is a descriptive charachter model since it is aimed to compare two students groups: the ones who had high test anxieties and low test anxieties. The participant group of the study consisted of 30 senior high school students-15 of them were determined as having high test anxiety and 15 of them having low test anxiety according to the results of the test anxiety scale which were applied to 102 senior high school students -studying at a state school under the supervision of Ministry of National Education located in the province of Adana. As the data collection tools, test anxiety scaleand a repertory grid technique which was prepared by the researcher were used. For the analysis of the data, computer based analysis programmes were used. According to the first finding of the study,the students who have a high level of test anxiety have a lower of self-worth beliefs than the ones who have a low level of test anxiety. Secondly, students who have a high level of test anxiety have a negative self-concept as a studentandtheoneswhohave a lowlevel of test anxietyhave a positive self-concept. The third findings hows that the students who have high level of test anxiety feelun companionable themselves to a students who has high level of success and academic motivation and feel close to the one who has high level of test anxiety; the students who have low level of test anxiety feel themselves close to the students who have high academic motivation and success and to the one who has high level of test anxiety. The finding that comes as the fourth is that self-perceptions of the students who have high level of test anxiety on their roles of being student and the perceptions of the people around them on these roles are more in compatible than the perceptions of the students who have low level of test anxiety. The fifth and last finding obtained at the end of this study shows that the students who have a high level of test anxiety have a higher level of cognitive complications than the ones who have a low level of test anxiety. As a conclusion, we can say tha tself-concept of the students who have high level of test anxiety shows negativity than the ones who have low level of test anxiety. Keywords: Anxiety, test anxiety, cognitive construction, self-respect,repertory grid technique