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Sunday, November 4, 2007

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This presentation is part of : Nursing Education Strategies
Managing Testing Anxiety: A Piece of the NCLEX Puzzle
Amy Nagorski Johnson, RNC, PhD, School of Nursing, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
Learning Objective #1: The participant will be able to discuss the relationship of anxiety and test scores.
Learning Objective #2: The participant will be able to describe the effect of exercise on anxiety.
Test anxiety is a physiologic and behavioral response students experience before and during examinations that is associated with a fear of failure.  Although the response can be improved with better study efforts, individual anxiety experiences need to be managed to improve test performance.  Strategies for reducing test-taking anxiety are numerous in the literature, yet few strategies are studied with nursing students.  The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of an exercise intervention on testing anxiety and examine the relationship of anxiety on test performance. 

 

Design:  Quasi-experimental factorial design.  Independent variable: walking intervention prior to the exam.  Dependent variable: score on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.

 

Hypothesis:  There is a significant difference in test-taking anxiety between students who participate in the walking intervention before an exam and students who do not.

 

Sample:  Junior-level undergraduate nursing students

 

Procedure:  All students were invited to participate in the study.  Students self-selected control and experimental groups.  31 students power-walked on campus one hour before the first major exam.  All students (N=52) completed the 40-question State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) just prior to testing. 

 

Results:  Students who completed the exercise intervention had significantly less testing anxiety than those who did not exercise (p=0.001).  There were no significant differences between groups including hours reported for sleep, study, and work. 

 

Implications:  Teaching students methods to improve test-taking skills is essential to nursing education due, in part, to the licensure exam required for becoming a registered nurse.  These findings support research on improving NCLEX performance and add to the body of knowledge on college testing experiences.

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