Norms and validation of the online and paper-and-pencil versions of the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS) for Polish adolescents and adults

Abstract

The Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS) is one of the most popular instruments measuring math anxiety (MA). It has been validated across several linguistic and cultural contexts. In this study, we investigated the extent of administration method invariance of the AMAS by comparing results (average scores, reliabilities, factorial structure) obtained online with those from paper-and-pencil. We administered the online version of the AMAS to Polish students. Results indicate that psychometric properties of the AMAS do not differ between online and paper-and-pencil administration. Additionally, average scores of the AMAS did not differ considerably between administration forms, contrary to previous results showing that computerized measurement of MA leads to higher scores. Therefore, our results provide evidence for the usefulness of the AMAS as a reliable and valid MA measurement tool for online research and online screening purposes across cultures and also large similarity between administration forms outside an American-English linguistic and cultural context. Finally, we provide percentile and standard norms for the AMAS for adolescents and adults (in the latter case for both online and paper-and-pencil administration) as well as critical differences for the comparison of both subscales in an individual participant for practical diagnostic purposes.Keywords: math anxiety, Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale, online survey, validation, norms Journal of Numerical Cognition, 2017, Vol. 3(3), 667-693, doi:10.5964/jnc.v3i3.121 Received: 2017-03-02. Accepted: 2017-08-17. Published (VoR): 2018-01-30.*Corresponding author at: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Arbeitsbereich Diagnostik und Kognitive Neuropsychologie, Fachbereich Psychologie, Schleichstraße 4 72076 Tübingen, Germany. E-mail: krzysztof.cipora@gmail.com This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Math Underachievement -Its Causes and ConsequencesPoor numeracy may even be more harmful for an individual than poor literacy (Butterworth, Varma, & Laurillard, 2011). Considerable large-scale economic consequences of math underachievement have also been reported (OECD, 2010). Therefore, the cognitive and emotional causes of impaired numeracy are of major interest both theoretically and practically. Regarding emotional aspects, math anxiety (MA) is probably the most prominent and important variable that negatively correlates with math achievement. It has been extensively investigated since the 1960's (see Dowker, Sarkar, & Looi, 2016 for review). A sizeable negative relationship between MA and math performance is evident in previous PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) studies Journal of Numerical Cognition jnc.psychopen.eu | 2363-8761 across virtually all countries involved in th...

Not all elementary school teachers are scared of math

“…As proposed by Cipora et al (2015) in the case of AMAS, ordinal alpha, based on polychoric correlations, is a more suitable method for estimating reliability. Using this measure, AMAS reliability was even slightly higher (ordinal alpha of the German form: .93; ordinal alpha of the French form: .91), which is comparable to the ordinal alpha reported for AMAS administered online (Polish form: .88; Cipora et al, 2018).…”

“…Cipora, Artemenko, & Nuerk, 2019). At the same time, norms are not available for most math anxiety questionnaires or are available only in some languages or for some age groups (for examples of norms see Caviola, Primi, Chiesi, & Mammarella, 2017;Cipora, Willmes, Szwarc, & Nuerk, 2018). For this reason, direct group comparisons remain the most feasible method to check if elementary school teachers are characterized by elevated levels of math anxiety as compared to other groups.…”

The Early Elementary School Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (the EES-AMAS): A New Adapted Version of the AMAS to Measure Math Anxiety in Young Children

“…Indeed, it is one of the most commonly used tools to measure MA in college and high school students (for a review, see Eden et al, 2013). It has been translated into several languages, including Polish (Cipora et al, 2015(Cipora et al, , 2018, Italian (Primi et al, 2014), Persian (Vahedi and Farrokhi, 2011) and German (Dietrich et al, 2015;Schillinger et al, 2018). These translations have been found to be valid and reliable, confirming the cross-cultural applicability of the AMAS.…”

Conducting Web-Based Experiments for Numerical Cognition Research

“…The most recent developments also allow for tracking the trajectories of participants’ mouse movements (Mathur & Reichling, 2018) and recording audio and video (Semmelmann, Hönekopp, & Weigelt, 2017; Semmelmann & Weigelt, 2018). Web-based data collection methods have started being used within numerical cognition research as well; for example, studies looked at numerical information recall performance (Eriksson & Lindskog, 2017), number-line estimation (Landy, Silbert, & Goldin, 2013), mathematical anxiety scores (Cipora, Willmes, Szwarc, & Nuerk, 2018; Ferguson, Maloney, Fugelsang, & Risko, 2015), reaction time and accuracy in visual stimulus presentation (Cipora, Soltanlou, Reips, & Nuerk, 2019; Gökaydin, Brugger, & Loetscher, 2018; Huber, Nuerk, Reips, & Soltanlou, 2017). Nonetheless, usage of these methods remains rare within numerical cognition 2…”