Development and Validation of Study Anxiety Scale for School Students

Study anxiety is among one of the many important factors that has been found to be negatively affecting the academic achievements of school children. The present study was aimed at exploring the phenomenon of study anxiety among school children. For this purpose the phenomenology of study anxiety was explored using semistructured interviews. On the basis of interviews, 28 items scale was constructed and then administered on the sample of 419 school children: 201 boys; and 218 girls from 6 Government Schools of Lahore. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 3 components of study anxiety i.e. fear of evaluation, behavioral manifestations and memory interference. The overall Cronbach Alpha was found to be .91 (p< .01), whereas the concurrent validity was found to be .68 and one week test-retest reliability was found to be .90 which was significantly high. The factor structure of the scale is discussed in a cultural context proposing a model showing possible links between different ecological factors and study anxiety.