Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Teacher’s observation and the related literature indicate that for many students the idea of taking a test can cause waves of panic and fear. As a result, it can negatively impact the student’s function. This study intends to investigate the effect of doing pranayama on test anxiety and test performance. The participants consist of 107 MA students who were randomly assigned to control and experimental group. The students of the experimental group practiced pranayama for one full semester before starting teaching. Sarason’s (1980) test anxiety scale was given to both control and experimental groups in the final session before taking the exam. The gathered data were analyzed statistically. It revealed that due to practicing pranayama, 33% of the participants of experimental group fall in the high test anxiety category while this percent is nearly twice for the control group (66.7%). Furthermore, the result of the t-test for test anxiety and test performance showed that there was a significant difference between the student of control and experimental groups and based on the mean the students of experimental group had lower test anxiety (M=16.00) comparing the students of control group (M=19.31). Similarly, males and females of the experimental group had lower test anxiety comparing their males and females in control group. Also, test performance of experimental group was higher. Finally, the result of correlation showed that there was a negative correlation between final test performance and test anxiety (r= -0.204, P<0.05). This means that the higher test anxiety, the lower test performance. The result can be helpful for teachers and students to lower test anxiety.
Keywords: Anxiety, Test Performance, Pranayama, Student