The relationship between test anxiety and pre-service teachers' performance in quantitative research methods

The mere mention of mathematics and its related courses such asquantitative research methods drive down shivers and create anxiety amongmost students. However, this phenomenon has not will been addressedamong preservice teachers. The purpose of this study was to examine therelationship between preservice teachers test anxiety and performance inquantitative research methods in education. And to achieve this purpose, arandom sample of 313 preservice teachers from a teacher educationUniversity in Ghana were administered the test anxiety inventory (TAI) andthe data analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The resultsrevealed a significant inverse relationship between test anxiety andpreservice teachers’ performance. Similarly, factors such as the examiner,the exam format, previous failures, examination time, presence ofinvigilator, and lack of adequate preparations were identified as determinantsof test anxiety. In terms of coping strategies, it was revealed that respondentsadopted cognitive, and educational strategies to mitigate the effect of testanxiety.