Math Anxiety: Its Characterization and Its Conceptual Model

Abstract

Mathematical anxiety has been studied frequently over many years, so different scales have been developed for that purpose. The aim of this study is to assess the five-factor model of Muñoz and Mato (2007) within the context of a public school. Therefore, the scale designed by these authors, which consists of 24 items integrated in five dimensions, in a 5-point Likert format, is used. Hence, 200 Mexican high school students were surveyed from a non-probabilistic self-determination sample. The data gathered showed a Cronbach alpha score of 0.751, reflecting acceptable internal consistency and reliability. However, it showed kurtosis of 9.521, indicating the lack of normality. As a consequence, the Bootstrap technique was used for this study in addition to the exploratory factor analysis. The data were analyzed using the IBM Statistic SPSS 25 for descriptive analysis, and the AMOS 24 software was used to determine the validity of the model. The findings report that the results turn out to be different from those expected by the original authors of the scale since a significant model was obtained explaining math anxiety configured by a four-factor structure instead of a five-factor one. Given that these findings could be a consequence of the socio-cultural conditions of the students in the sample, further studies are recommended.