The Effect of Formative Assessment on Test Anxiety of Nursing Students

Background and Objective: Assessment is recognized as one of the effective factors in the learning of students in higher education. In addition, the quality of learning outcomes depends on the quality of the evaluation. However, assessment can have negative effects on individual performance due to its association with test anxiety. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of formative assessment on test anxiety of students. Materials and Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 68 nursing students and contained two groups, before and after the procedure. In the intervention group, a formative test was held every four weeks. However, subjects of the control group took only one final exam. In addition, the level of test anxiety of the participants was measured before and after the intervention using motivated strategies for learning questionnaire by Pintrich and De Groot. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 16. Results: In this research, mean and standard deviation of anxiety in the control group significantly increased from 18.5±08.63 before intervention (pretest) to 24.96±2.37 after the intervention (posttest) (P=0.001). In the interevention group, mean and standard deviation of test anxiety significantly reduced from 13.72±3.31 before the intervention to 18.5±08.56 after the intervention (P=0.001). While the comparison of mean score of test anxiety of both groups before the intervention revealed no significant difference (P=0.87), there was a significant difference between the groups after the intervention (P=0.001). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, performing formative assessment can help test anxiety control of students. In addition to the important effect of formative assessment on learning of students, this process prevents the effect of negative outcomes of anxiety on the actual performance of students