Abstract
Fourteen self‐referred community college students were enrolled in a nine‐session behavior modification program to relieve test anxiety. Twenty self‐referred students served as a control group that received no treatment. Instruction in muscle relaxation techniques was followed by desensitization to a specially constructed hierarchy of 25 test‐related anxiety‐producing items. The experimental group showed a significant increase in grade point average from 1.73, term before, to 2.39 at the end of the treatment term. The control group showed no significant change for the same time period. This suggests that a test‐anxiety hierarchy can be effectively standardized for use with an urban community college population.