Do parents have exam anxiety, too? The predictive role of irrational beliefs and perfectionism with parental exam anxiety in explaining students’ exam anxiety

Abstract

Objectives: Exam Anxiety is a condition influenced by both personal and environmental factors as well as cultural, family, and family-related systems. Accordingly, the current study aims at determining the predictive role of parental exam anxiety with irrational beliefs and perfectionism in explaining students’ exam anxiety. Methods: The study included a total of 1006 participants, students (N = 503 (58%) female and (42%) male) and parents (N = 503 (65%) female and (35%) male) of these students. The Test Anxiety Inventory, Exam Anxiety Scale for Parents, The Irrational Beliefs Scale for Adolescence, and Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale were used as data collection instruments for this study. Results: The regression analyses indicated that exam anxiety in students was significantly predicted by the worry sub-dimension of parental exam anxiety, irrational beliefs as well as concern over mistakes, parental criticism, and doubting of actions sub-dimension of perfectionism. Conclusion: The findings are discussed and explained based on the relevant literature.

Beyond Individual Factors: Contextual Factors Matter for Students’ Test anxiety_Preprint

“…In our study, we found that parents' trait anxiety, school level and school type predicted students' test anxiety (i.e., 9%) above the part of variance explained by various important individual predictors (i.e., stress mindsets, perfectionism, and motivation; 16%). In line withBaytemir et al (2022), our results thus further highlight that parental and school factors matter and may be an interesting additional intervention path to tame students' test anxiety.Our study simultaneously considered multiple individual and contextual factors of students' test anxiety. Among the five parental-level factors, only parent trait anxiety predicted students' test anxiety.…”

“…A few years later, Baytemir et al (2022) are consistent with the school system structure of Quebec province, which can generate differences in the school environments between public and private schools, as well as elementary and high schools. In the past decades, the offer of enriched programs has significantly increased in the Quebec school market, where attending enriched programs or private schools has led to higher education attainment levels for students (Frenette & Chan, 2015).…”

“…Consequently, parents' predisposition to interpret various environmental events negatively, also called trait anxiety (Spielberger, 1983), could shape students' tendency to appraise these events as threats, including academic evaluations. A recent study including 503 parent-child dyads indeed found that parental test anxiety trait significantly predicted adolescents' test anxiety (Baytemir, 2022).…”

Comparative Analysis of Psychometric Properties of Irrational Belief Scale of Anxiety Patients

“…'B' mentions to irrational beliefs, whereas 'C' denotes to the behavioral and psychological consequences of irrational beliefs like maladaptive behavior and psychological disturbance. Inside this context, 'D' mention to the therapeutic procedure of disputing the irrational beliefs and 'E' refers to the effect, where changing and adapting rational beliefs and following decline in maladaptive psychological symptoms and behaviors (Bernard & DiGiuseppe, 1989;Baytemir, 2023).…”