The Development and Psychometric Assessment of a Scale to Measure the Severity of Examination Anxiety among Undergraduate University Students

Abstract

The study reported here aimed to develop and psychometrically assess aninstrument to measure examination anxiety among undergraduate universitystudents. Based on empirical evidence and recent literature review wedeveloped a 1 2 item scale to measure the severity of examination anxiety. Theinstrument was administered to students, two weeks before they wrote theirexaminations. Experts (n=1 0) participated in a validation process of theinstrument before it was administered to students (n= 40). Internal consistencyreliability for the instrument was 0. 82 (Cronbach's alpha) and there was 92 %overall agreement between experts about the relevance of the instruments’items to measure students’ examination anxiety, providing evidence for contentvalidity. Factor analysis resulted in three cohesive and theoretically meaningfulfactors. There is evidence for content and convergent validity. The developedinstrument is a reliable, valid and empirical measure to assess the severity ofexamination anxiety. The scale will take five minutes to complete.