Test anxiety and causal attributions: Some evidence toward replication

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of causal attributions and their relationship to measures of trait and state test anxiety, and perceptions of success. Eighty-four female undergraduates completed a sentence memory task after which they rated their level of perceived success, generated reasons for their performance, and rated these reasons for their performance along three causal attribution dimensions (internality, stability, globality). Perception of success was related to the three explanatory style dimensions, with internality as the weakest of the three relationships. Although the expected test anxiety-outcome interactions were not found, test anxiety relationships were noted indirectly from both the attribution rating scale analyses and directly from the content analyses. For the former results indicated that the strongest relationships were between test anxiety (trait and state) with perception of success. Content analyses supported the importance of the internality dimension, and supplemented the rating scale analyses. The pattern of findings was interpreted to suggest the importance of task and/or situational variables in the attribution process, a point of recent interest.

Key Words:

• Test anxiety
• causal attributions
• internality
• stability
• globality
• success perception