Research of exam anxiety of girls(boarding and day pupils)who are having education at Kandilli Girls School

The aim of this research is to find out the amount of exam anxiety that female boarders and day pupils suffer from after the secondary education has been expanded to four years. The research also aims to determine the correlation between personal characteristics and the variables of exam anxiety inventory. The students of Kandilli Kız Lisesi (Kandilli Girls? School) constitute the sample in the research. The research has been conducted with a random sample of 208 nine-graders, 164 tengraders and 121 eleven graders. ?The Exam Anxiety Inventory,? which was developed by Spielbergen and translated into Turkish as ?Sınav Kaygı Envanteri? by Öner Kaymak (stanbul-1987) , and ?The Personal Information Form? (Kisisel Bilgi Formu), which was prepared by the researcher himself, have been used in order to collect data. ?The Personal Information Form? identifies ten variables that are assumed to be related to exam anxiety: educational system (old-new), student type (boarder-day pupils), student?s grade, student?s family?s income, student?s mother?s education, student?s father?s education, the family?s attidutes towards the students, student?s number of siblings, the place where the student lived before starting her secondary education, and the way the student prepares for an exam. Besides, ?The Exam Anxiety Inventory? includes twenty variables, each of which has four choices. The research makes use of SPSS statistical programme in order to analyze the data. It shows, first, the frequencies of all the 493 students and then the frequencies of those students with high exam anxiety in terms of personal characteristics. The study also displays the frequencies of the variables for which the stdents marked the choices ?often? and ?almost always.? Furthermore , the research reveals to which variable each personal characteristic is connected. According to the findings, the personal characteristics which show the biggest difference from exam anxiety variables are student?s mother?s education, student?s number of siblings and the way the student prepares for an exam.ıt is noticeable that those students who belong to four-year educational system are more anxious than others, and that the variables related to the order of exams have been chosen a lot by the students. Key Words: Adolescent, adolescence, anxiety, exam anxiety, Inventory of Attidutes Towards Examination.