Test anxiety research: students with vision impairments and students with mild intellectual disabilities

There is an absence of research on test anxiety in students with disabilities although such testing is taken for granted among students without disabilities. This study investigated the test anxiety of the students in each of the two disability groups, those with vision impairments and those with intellectual disabilities who are placed in specialist and mainstream educational settings in South Australia. The Spielberger's Test Anxiety questionnaire which measures two components, worry and emotionality and the total test anxiety was administered to 25 students with vision impairments and 20 students with intellectual disabilities. The findings indicated that among both groups of students, most had high scores in worry, emotionality and total test anxiety. However, students with vision impairments had slightly higher physically fearful symptoms (emotionality) in comparison to cognitive fears (worry) in a testing situation, while exactly the reverse was found for students with intellectual disabilities. The Welch two independent sample t-tests revealed that while there were no significant differences between female and male students with vision impairments, in the Total Test Anxiety, Worry and Emotionality components, the exactly opposite was found for students with intellectual disabilities. The female students with intellectual disabilities were found to be significantly higher than their male counterparts in the Total Test Anxiety, Worry and Emotionality.