Making Test Anxiety a Laughing Matter: A Quantitative Study

Relieving test anxiety actions range from relaxation exercises to prescription medication. Humor can be a simple method of test anxiety relief. The current study was used to determine if humor, in the form of a cartoon, placed on the splash page of an online exam improved the test scores of students who have high test anxiety. In the current study, 2 theories were used to guide the research. The interference theory by Ralf Schwarzer and Matthias Jerusalem indicated students have difficulty separating competing thoughts during an exam. In the adult learning theory by Malcolm Knowles, the learning of children and adults was differentiated, while explaining how adults learn. A quasi-experimental quantitative design was used to find a possible correlation between humor and test anxiety relief. The study sample comprised an equal number of students with high test anxiety and students with low test anxiety. The low test anxiety group comprised the control group. A 2-sample t test was used to search for a correlation between the cartoon and the exam scores. Intended benefits of the study included: (a) students with test anxiety find relief from test anxiety, (b) instructors achieve reliable assessments of students with test anxiety, and (c) confident, well-educated graduates. The current study results showed the opposite of expected results. The high test anxiety group did worse on the exam with the cartoon. The 2-sample t test showed a negative improvement of –6.222 between midterm and final exams for the high test anxiety group