Academic Anxiety and Its Effect on Academic Achievement among Secondary Students

Abstract

Academic anxiety is one of the most important aspects of negative motivation and has direct debilitating effects on school performance. Dusek (1980, p. 88) defines Academic anxiety as "an unpleasant feeling or emotional state that has physiological and behavioral concomitants, and that is experienced in formal testing or other evaluative situations." Although most students experience some occasional anxiety when evaluated in different situations and areas, we are primarily concerned here with Academic anxiety as a relatively stable predisposition in evaluative situations (see Hill 1980).  Hence, the present investigation has taken up to find out the impact of academic anxiety on academic achievement among secondary students in Nilgiris District. The data were collected from 200 9^th standard students from Govt and Private schools in Nilgiris District using academic anxiety questionnaire.  The academic achievement scores were collected from the school records. The simple random sampling method was adopted to select the sample.  The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and f-test.  The study concludes that there is significant difference in academic achievement between the groups based on academic anxiety among the selected secondary students.