The impacts of inhalation aromatherapy with lavender essential oil on students’ test anxiety: a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial

Abstract

Background: Test anxiety (TA) can hinder students' academic achievement and cause them educational decline and psychological problems. Objective: The effect of inhalation aromatherapy with lavender essential oil on nursing students' test anxiety was investigated. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study was conducted on 33 nursing students who had taken the Community Health Nursing II course and were going to take its final exam. Before taking the exam of the course, the students were allocated to the aromatherapy (n = 16) and the control groups (n = 17). For the aromatherapy group, ten drops of lavender essential oil was added to one liter of water and the solution was distributed in the room space for fifteen minutes by using a humidifier. However, the humidifier which was used for the control group included of only pure water without any essential oil. The students' test anxiety was measured both before and after the study intervention by employing the Test Anxiety Inventory. Results: There was no significant difference between the study groups regarding the participating students' demographic characteristics as well as the pretest and the posttest values of test anxiety. However, within-group comparisons indicated that in the aromatherapy group, the posttest value of test anxiety was significantly lower than the pretest value. Conclusions: The findings indicated that inhalation aromatherapy with lavender essential oil had no positive effects on students' test anxiety. However, as the level of test anxiety in the aromatherapy group decreased significantly after the intervention and the students in this group reported that aromatherapy was pleasant to them. Aromatherapy is probably insignificant in alleviating acute or state anxieties.

Aromatherapy with inhalation effectively alleviates the test anxiety of college students: A meta-analysis

“…After reviewing the entire text, 18 studies were excluded. Therefore, a total of 7 articles were included in the final meta-analysis (Xie and Jin, 2012;Ko et al, 2013;Johnson, 2014;Bekhradi and Vakilian, 2016;Jafarbegloo and Bakouei, 2020;Hashemi et al, 2021;Özer et al, 2022).…”

“…All studies were RCTs, and a total of 425 subjects were enrolled, comprising 217 in the experimental group, and 208 in the control group (blank control group or placebo control group). Three studies (Bekhradi and Vakilian, 2016;Jafarbegloo and Bakouei, 2020;Hashemi et al, 2021) were conducted in Iran, while the other four studies (Xie and Jin, 2012;Ko et al, 2013;Johnson, 2014;Özer et al, 2022) were carried out in Turkey, China, Korea, and the USA. In each study, aromatherapy inhalation was utilized as an intervention.…”

“…In each study, aromatherapy inhalation was utilized as an intervention. Two studies (Ko et al, 2013;Hashemi et al, 2021) employed a blending of essential oils, three studies (Xie and Jin, 2012;Bekhradi and Vakilian, 2016;Jafarbegloo and Bakouei, 2020) used lavender essential oil, and two studies (Johnson, 2014;Özer et al, 2022) used lemon essential oil. The length of the aromatherapy session varied, while the length of the therapy ranged from a single application to 2 weeks.…”

“…A variety of measurements were used effectively to assess whether aromatherapy influenced college students' test anxiety. Three studies (Xie and Jin, 2012;Ko et al, 2013;Jafarbegloo and Bakouei, 2020) used the Test Anxiety Scale (TAI), two studies (Bekhradi and Vakilian, 2016;Özer et al, 2022) used the Sarason Test Anxiety Scale (TAS), one study (Hashemi et al, 2021) used the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and one study (Johnson, 2014) used the Cognitive Test Anxiety Survey (CTAS).…”

“…Currently, many studies have used aromatherapy to treat test anxiety in college students, but the outcomes were debatable. Although some studies have shown that aromatherapy is effective in alleviating test anxiety in college students (Ko et al, 2013;Özer et al, 2022), some studies have not (Johnson, 2014;Jafarbegloo and Bakouei, 2020). These results are controversial, and the exact efficacy of aromatherapy has not been fully confirmed.…”