Efficacy of combined therapy of cognitive restructuring and study skills counselling on test anxiety among senior high school students in Ghana

Abstract

Test anxiety is a serious problem for many students. It is a major obstacle to academic performance. In view of this, it is necessary to help students manage test anxiety through psychological interventions. This study investigated the combined effects of cognitive restructuring therapy and study skills counselling on test anxiety among senior high school students in Ghana. The population for this study was all second year senior high School students in the Komenda Edina Eguafo Abrem Municipality. Quasi-experimental, pre-test, post-test control group design guided the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 40 respondents to participate in the study. Two research hypotheses were formulated for the study and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The data were analysed using independent samples t-test. The study revealed that cognitive restructuring and study skills counselling had significant effect on the test anxiety of participants in the experimental group at post-test when compared with the control. Again, the results showed that there was no significant influence of gender on the test anxiety scores of the participants in the experimental group at post-test. Based on the findings, it was recommended that counsellors should make use of cognitive restructuring and study skills counselling in order to reduce or manage test anxiety among senior high school students.