Abstract

A considerable number of students regard the statistics courses as challenging, and even anxiety-inducing, more than other courses in their curriculum. Many students feel impaired by feelings of state anxiety in the examination and therefore probably show lower achievements. The impact of test anxiety on academic achievement is well documented. However, little is known about the mediating and moderating effects of statistics-specific test anxiety, self-efficacy, and situational factors on statistic achievement among psychology students. The aim of this study is to shed light on how statistics-specific test anxiety, general test anxiety and self-efficacy relate to performance in a statistics examination/ achievement. Specifically, We want to explore the role of test anxiety (general and statistics-specific) and of statistics anxiety as mediating the link between self-efficacy and achievements in statistics courses. Specifically, we will test two indirect effects. The first is through general test anxiety. The other is through statistics anxiety followed by statistics-specific test anxiety. The participants will be psychology students enrolled in an undergraduate introductory statistics course. We believe this model will help in understanding the underlying mechanism that links self-efficacy to achievements, and help both students and lecturers focus on easing the dominant domain of test anxiety – whether it is general or statistics-related.