Browsing by Author "Pihlström, Roy"

The aim of the present study was to examine how ninth graders’ self-reported anxiety symptoms are related to their time on task and task performance in low-stakes assessment. The aim of the present study was also to examine if there are gender differences in how ninth graders’ self-reported anxiety symptoms are related to their time on task and task performance in low-stakes assessment. The relation between self-reported anxiety symptoms and time on task and task performance in low-stakes assessment, has presumably not been studied before. However studies show, that in most cases, anxiety correlates negatively with cognitive processes and task performance. The present study’s data is a part of MetLoFin longitudinal data that was collected in Helsinki metropolitan area in 2011 and 2014. The study examined lower secondary school pupils’ learning to learn, achievement, well-being and their relations. The first phase of the main data was collected in the fall of 2011 when the pupils were at seventh grade. The second phase of the main study was collected in the spring of 2014 from the same students, who at the time were at ninth grade. In the present study, only the data from 2014 was used which consisted of 5813 pupils from ninth grade. Anxiety symptoms were measured with three different indicators that measured emotional difficulties, academic pressure and somatic symptoms. The data was analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics 25. The study showed that when examining the whole data, emotional difficulties and academic pressure correlated negatively with time on task and task performance. The relation between somatic symptoms and time on task and task performance was weak and conflicting when examining the whole data. The study also showed that with boys, the self-reported anxiety symptoms correlated negatively with time on task and task performance. With girls, the relation between self-reported anxiety symptoms and time on task and task performance in low-stakes assessment was notably weaker.