Cognitive test anxiety and student well-being: An examination of bidirectional effects

Test anxiety is a situation-specific form of anxiety that occurs before, during and/or after a performance-evaluative context. Beyond educational outcomes, test anxiety can have detrimental effects on students' subjective well-being (SWB). However, the predictive relationship between test anxiety and SWB remains unclear as limited studies to date have examined the association using longitudinal designs.

The current study seeks to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the predictive relationship between cognitive test anxiety and SWB, which is operationalized by the PERMA model.

The sample comprised 3497 students (2026 boys, 1471 girls) across 13 government schools in Singapore.

The PERMA domains (Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) and cognitive test anxiety were measured over two time points, across a span of 1 year. Separate cross-lagged panel models were set up to examine the reciprocal predictive effects between cognitive test anxiety and each of the five PERMA well-being domains independently.

All five models point to the presence of a unidirectional predictive relationship between cognitive test anxiety and SWB. Students' test anxiety at Time 1 negatively predicted all five PERMA domains at Time 2, while the reverse associations were not significant.

Test anxiety negatively predicted students' future levels of SWB, while the reciprocal predictive pathway from SWB to test anxiety may not hold. This highlights the potential benefits of early interventions for test anxiety, which predicts higher future levels of SWB in students later along their academic journey.