Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

Mathematics*; Psychological Tests/*standards ; Test Anxiety/*psychology; Child ; Cross-Cultural Comparison ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Spain ; Test Anxiety/diagnosis

Math anxiety (MA) affects students of all age groups. Because of its effects on children's academic development, the need to recognize its early manifestations has been highlighted. We designed a European-Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA; Wu et al. (2012)), and assessed its psychometric properties in a sample of children aged 7 to 12 years. The participants (967 typically developing children) were elementary school students recruited from ten schools. Children reported their general and math anxiety levels in an individual session and performed nonverbal IQ and math abilities subtests in a group session. Teachers reported the final math grades. The psychometric indices obtained, and the resulting factor structure revealed that the European-Spanish version of the SEMA developed in this study is a reliable and valid measure to evaluate MA in children from 3rd to 6th grade. Moreover, we explored gender differences, that resulted in small effect sizes, which disappeared when controlling for trait anxiety. Differences across grades were found for both global MA and the numerical processing anxiety factor but not for the situational and performance anxiety factor. Finally, MA was negatively associated with students' math achievement, although the strength of the associations varied with the MA measure selected, the kind of math achievement analyzed, and the school stage considered. Our findings highlight the relevance of MA in elementary school and highlight the need for an early identification of students at risk of suffering MA to palliate the negative consequences of MA in children's cognitive and academic development.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Date Created: 20210805 Date Completed: 20211203 Latest Revision: 20211214

20240628

PMC8341591

10.1371/journal.pone.0255777

34352004