Exploring the Connection Between 8th Graders' Math Anxiety and Math Performance

Abstract

Math anxiety affects many students at an early age (Ramirez et al, 2013). As they progress through school and encounter more advanced math, it is important to discover how students’ levels of math anxiety impact them. High math anxiety has previously been connected to low performance in math (Ramirez et al 2013). Our study investigates whether this connection is the same across tests with different formats and time restrictions. This study involved giving 59 eighth graders three types of tests: a math fluency timed test involving basic math facts (3 minutes); a more advanced fraction arithmetic timed test (12 minutes); and a full algebra test with little time pressure (45 minutes). We hypothesized that the correlation with math anxiety would be the strongest with the full algebra test, which requires more complex strategies. We conducted correlation analyses, which showed that there was a negative correlation between reported math anxiety and algebra test scores (r=0.301, p=0.022), however there was no significant correlation with math fluency (r=0.166, p=0.208) or fraction arithmetic (r=0.114, p=0.391) scores. These results suggest that math anxiety may be more impactful on students taking more advanced math tests.