Desensitization of test anxious urban community-college students and resulting changes in grade point average: a...

Ninety-seven self-referred students applied for enrollment in a behavior modification program to reduce test anxiety. Those whose free time coincided with the workshop times served as the experimental group (N = 42), while the remainder served as the control group (N = 55). At the end of the treatment semester, results indicated that students who participated in the program had improved their academic averages more than the control group, as measured by Mann-Whitney U test. After the workshop series, the experimental group reported less debilitating anxiety than the control group, as measured by the Alpert-Haber Test Anxiety Questionnaire. There was no comparable finding for facilitating anxiety. These results support those reported by Hudesman and Wiesner (1979) on a similar sample.