19th September 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Research carried out by Edge Hill University, the University of South Australia and the AQA exam board has shown that teenagers who stress about exam results are likely to get lower results than those who can remain calm. The research suggests that students who worried about their results were likely to score up to one and a half grades lower than their peers. The research is based on a survey of 325 students taken three or four months before they were due to sit their GCSE exams. The findings will be presented to the British Educational Research association this week.
The teenagers surveyed were from the North West of England, and were asked to agree or disagree with 44 statements regarding how confident they felt about exams, their strategies for dealing with anxiety, and their exam worries. The statements related to a broad range of topics surrounding exam worries, including how concerned students were about how they would be viewed by their friends and family if they performed badly in exams. The statements also related to how students felt while they were sitting exams.
The researchers were careful to control for prior attainment, and demonstrated that students of the same ability could perform up to 2 grades differently if one student was calm and the other stressed. They found that GCSE results of individual students could be accurately predicted by looking at worry levels in teenagers. According to the study, the difference between those who show high levels of stress and those who don’t worry could be the difference between A* and B grades. Now that increased worry has been shown to consistently adversely affect results, it is hoped that schools will take steps to help students address stress and anxiety around exams.