An investigation of the relationship between test anxiety and the level of self-esteem of the students who are getting prepared to OKS (high school entrance examination)

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the present study was to examine the interplay between test anxietyand self-esteem of the 8th grade students who are getting prepared for the OKS ( High SchoolEntrance Examination). In addition, relations between test anxiety and the following variablesare examined: family attitudes, gender, socio-economic status and stress level.Participants were 345 students (177 female, 168 male) attending 8th grades of differentschools of Ankara in the academic year 2004-2005.?Test Anxiety Scale? adopted to Turkish by Öner (1986), ?Coopersmith Self-EsteemScale? developed by Coopersmith (1967) and ?Level of Perceived Stress Scale? developed byÖzbay and Palancı (2003) were administered.The relations between test anxiety and the following variables; family attitudes,gender, self-esteem and stress, are examined by Pearson correlation, F-test and t-test. Thesignificance level is determined to be 0.05.According to the results, the relationship between the emationality subscale of testanxiety and family attitudes was not significant. The relationship between worry subscale oftest anxiety and family attitudes, on the other hand, was found out to be significant. Moreover,the relatioships between test anxiety and perceived stress level, self-esteem and gender werealso significant. The results were discussed in the light of previous resesarch, and futureresearch implications are also given.Keywords: Test anxiety, self-esteem and gender.ii