Validation of a TAI Short Form with an Adolescent Sample

ABSTRACT

Although test anxiety is increasingly used in research with multiple constructs, it is not always possible to administer a lengthy scale to measure it. Taylor and Deane (2002) developed a 5-item short form of the 20-item Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI; see Spielberger, Gonzalez, Taylor, Algaze, & Anton, 1978). Although evidence of reliability and validity was good, there were several limitations, including the age and gender of the sample, and the lack of data obtained with the short form rather than the original TAI. The current study attempts to address those limitations and augment previous results with additional types of validity evidence (i.e., coefficients of divergent validity and exploratory factor analysis) in a sample of 152 seventh- and eighth-graders. Results were high reliability (.86) and good evidence of multiple facets of validity. Previous results were confirmed and extended for adolescents and for use in applied psychological and educational settings.

Keywords:

• anxiety
• fear
• psychoeducational assessment
• psychometrics
• test design
• testing

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. John Ritzler, Dr. Joanna Martin, and Mr. Sean Finn for their assistance in data collection. The author would also like to thank the reviewers for their excellent and patient feedback on the writing of this manuscript. This manuscript is based on data collected for a doctoral dissertation written at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and presented as a poster at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association.

Notes

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

***p < .001.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

***p < .001.

^aThis item was part of the Emotionality subscale on the original 20-item TAI.

^bThis item was part of the Worry subscale on the original 20-item TAI.