First-year university students’ authentic experiences with evaluation anxiety and their attitudes toward assessment

Abstract

In this study, we sought to understand assessment-related attitudes and authentic experiences of evaluation anxiety with a sample of first-year university students. We focused on identifying: (a) why students had reported high levels of anxiety on a recent, grade-bearing assessment, and (b) how their attitudes toward assessment type and weighting influenced their views on anxiety and learning. Drawing on social constructivist principles, 31 first-year students in New Zealand participated in a 25-minute interview. Semi-structured interviews included open-ended items about students’ experiences with anxiety, followed by a Q-sort task that structured dialogue around assessment attitudes. Results show that evaluation anxiety was reportedly caused by several factors, including students’ doubts about their capabilities, concerns about insufficient time and time management, external pressures to be successful, unclear institutional standards for quality, and concerns about performing well on certain types of assessment. Students reported that oral presentations and high-stakes written tasks were more anxiety-inducing for them. Meanwhile, students reported that high-stakes written tasks, low-stakes tests, and low-stakes written tasks helped them learn more effectively than other assessment types and weightings. We discuss the implications of assessment design, including the challenges of evaluating students in a way that facilitates learning and limits unnecessary evaluation anxiety.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• assessment
• evaluation
• first-year university students
• learning

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ako Aotearoa, Erik Brogt, Anne Horton, Maansa Bajaj, and Xin Ren for their support and involvement in the current research. We also thank the participants as well as the editor and anonymous reviewers for their recommendations on previous drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Dr Valerie Sotardi is Senior Lecturer of Educational Psychology and Quantitative Research at the University of Canterbury. Her research interests focus on motivation and stress management in young people. These include identifying diverse settings in which young people experience stress and anxiety, evaluating how these experiences affect the attitudes, self-perceptions, and well-being of young people, and designing evidence-based coping strategies to help young people effectively manage stress and anxiety.

Dr Hilary Dutton is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education at University of Canterbury. Her research focuses on strengths-based youth development and relational approaches to working with young people, such as mentoring and youth work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valerie Sotardi

 

Hilary Dutton