A Study to Determine the Exam Anxiety of University Students: The Case of Afyon Kocatepe University

Abstract

Exam anxiety, which is an element affecting the success of exams in school terms, is a situation that students face from the first years of their education. The students who are introduced to the exam in the first time when they start school, face the exam continuously during their life. Especially university students, who are going to start their business life, compete with their friends in a competitive environment in order to achieve their goals for the future and to be in a good position in their professions. As a matter of fact, the anxiety in the exams to reach the goals in this race affects the success. For this purpose, a field study was conducted on the students of Vocational School of Afyon Kocatepe University to determine the test anxiety and the relationship between various variables. The main problematic of the study is the level of exam anxiety of vocational high school students and how they differ according to socio-demographic characteristics.In order to collect data, a questionnaire consisting of 34 questions was used. The first 5 questions in the questionnaire aimed to reveal the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. Exam anxiety is a negative situation experienced by students during the education process. This situation may affect students negatively. Many factors affect students' anxiety before the exam. These factors include; family attitudes and behaviors, working environment, financial conditions, friend relations, socialization, teacher-student relations and expectations. Therefore, in order to minimize exam anxiety, considering the above factors, besides families and trainers; It is recommended that students be made aware of these issues from an early age. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the students' test anxiety levels were high, while demographic factors did not show any difference on the test anxiety.