The interrelationship between academic achievement of college freshmen women and measures of anxiety and ability

Graduation date: 1973The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship\ud between a measure of anxiety and academic achievement of freshmen\ud women enrolled in the University of Northern Colorado (U.N.C.).\ud One thousand and eighty women, eighty-seven percent of the\ud freshmen women, were included in this study. All subjects completed\ud the American College Test (ACT) prior to their admission\ud to U.N.C. The State-Trait-Anxiety-Inventory A-Trait (STAI) was\ud administered to all entering freshmen.\ud Correlation and analysis of variance models were used to\ud investigate the relationship of anxiety to Cumulative Grade Point\ud Average (CGPA) for defined levels of academic ability. The subjects\ud were grouped into three levels of anxiety designated as upper,\ud middle and lower thirds. The four academic ability levels were\ud based on ACT composite score distributions that were approximately\ud proportionate to groupings common to the total range of ACT scores\ud for women in the defined population. The four academic ability levels\ud were designated as high ability, above average, below average, and\ud low ability students. The following null hypotheses were tested. I. There are no differences among the anxiety groups at any\ud of the levels of tested academic ability. II. There are no differences in the academic achievement\ud of high and low anxiety students who have above average\ud academic ability. III. There are no differences in the academic achievement\ud of high and low anxiety students who have below average\ud academic ability. IV. There are no differences in the academic achievement of\ud high and low anxiety students who have average academic\ud ability. V. There are no differences in academic achievement\ud between the moderate anxiety group and the combined\ud high and low anxiety group. VI. There are no differences in the estimation of CGPA\ud from ACT and anxiety scores in a second degree\ud curvilinear equation and an estimation of\ud CGPA from ACT and anxiety scores in a linear\ud equation. VII. There are no differences in estimating CGPA from\ud ACT measures alone and an estimate based on both\ud ACT and anxiety scores. Null hypothesis III was the only hypothesis rejected (p<.05).\ud The level of differences found between the high and low anxiety group\ud for this low ability category indicated that the high anxiety group\ud obtained significantly higher CGPA. This result does not support\ud the assumptions of drive theory. The major conclusion was that\ud academic achievement for the 1,080 college women studied appeared\ud to be randomly related to A-Trait anxiety measures. Further results\ud of the study indicate that drive theory as defined in this research\ud failed to predict or interpret the academic achievement for women\ud students at any of the designated academic ability levels