Educational Psychology

Reduction of Test Anxiety; Cognitive or Behavioral Emotion Regulation training?

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Zahra Jahanbakhsh 1
Mehdi Vafayizadeh 2

1 Department of Assessment and Measurement, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Department of Elementary Education, University of Farhangian, Tehran, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22054/jep.2024.81244.4046
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of cognitive emotion regulation strategies training (CER) in comparison with emotional behavioral regulation strategies training (BER) in reducing the test anxiety level of teacher-students of Farhangian University. The research design of this study was a true experiment. The statistical population included all the undergraduate teacher-students of Farhangian University of Tehran province; a sample of 400 people voluntarily answered the research questionnaire online. The criterion for entering the research was an exam score above 20 (as a person with severe exam anxiety); based on this, 80 people were separated from the people. The criterion for leaving the study was absence of more than two sessions during the training period and failure to answer more than 5 questions of the questionnaire. Finally, 36 people were voluntarily selected to cooperate in the research, and after random assignment in the groups, these people were invited to carry out the training in the experimental groups, in 10 sessions of 150 minutes. There were 23 girls (63.88%) and 13 boys (36.11%). In order to collect data, Sarason's test anxiety questionnaire (Sarason, 1957) was used. Covariance analysis was used to analyze the collected data. The results of this research indicated that the test anxiety level of participants in both CER and BER groups had decreased in the post-test and follow-up phase compared to the pre-test phase. In addition, training on the cognitive emotion regulation strategies in the result stage has a greater reduction compared to training on behavioral emotion regulation strategies.

Keywords

Test anxiety
cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CER)
behavioral emotion regulation strategies (BER)
Subjects
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Educational Psychology
Volume 21, Issue 78
Autumn 2025
Pages 231-257

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