Claims

Test anxiety is negatively associated with exam performance, and no moderation by proctoring was detected

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2022 · checked against its sources 2026-10-19 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? Exam grades were negatively associated with test anxiety (β = -0.30, SE = 0.09, p < 0.001); neither proctoring (p = 0.79) nor the test anxiety × proctoring interaction (p = 0.72) was significant, which shows no detected effect or moderation rather than an absent one. → Conijn 2022

Evidence

Conijn 2022

Conijn, R., Kleingeld, A., Matzat, U., & Snijders, C. (2022). The fear of big brother: The potential negative side-effects of proctored exams. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 38(6), 1521-1534. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12651

q2 · i? · associational · r2

Multi-level model of exam grades with student and course as random factors and test anxiety, proctoring and their interaction as fixed effects, on the subset of courses with exam grades. The study reports "a significant negative effect of test anxiety on exam grade (β = /C00.30, SE = 0.09, p < 0.001)"; hypothesis 1.5 was partly supported. The design is observational (proctoring was set by course teachers and anxiety was measured, not manipulated), so the association cannot show that anxiety lowers grades, and the nonsignificant proctoring terms are an absence of evidence, not evidence of no effect.

"The model showed a significant negative effect of test anxiety on exam grade (β = /C00.30, SE = 0.09, p < 0.001), but no effect of proctoring (p = 0.79) and no effect of the interaction between test anxiety and proctoring ( p = 0.72)."

Studies bearing on this claim

Does anxiety about the end-point test lower the scores it records, and do the test's conditions change that? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 9 narrower claims that bear on it: 6 distinct studies (2 quant-synthesis, 2 causal, 1 associational, 1 review), q2–q4, 3 of 6 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Study Design Effect as recorded Bears on this claim through
Conijn 2022 q2 · associational · r2 i? this claim; Students taking online and proctored online exams report higher test anxiety than students (qualifies); Lack of study space and financial issues are associated with higher test anxiety in online (qualifies); Proctored online exams show no effect on students' exam performance (qualifies); Familiarity with online and proctored exams, approximated by exam quartile, shows no effec (qualifies)
Barroso et al. 2021 q3 · quant-synthesis · r2 i2 · medium effect, r=-.28 Math anxiety has a small-to-moderate negative correlation with math achievement (r = −.28) (supports)
Ramirez and Beilock 2011 q3 · causal · r2 i2 · medium effect, d=0.57 Brief expressive writing before an exam can raise test-anxious students' scores, but acros (qualifies)
O'Meara and Lovett 2026 q4 · quant-synthesis · r3 i0 · negligible effect, r=.06 (n.s.) on performance after outlier removal; r=−.05/−.10 on anxiety Brief expressive writing before an exam can raise test-anxious students' scores, but acros (qualifies)
Karpicke 2017 q2 · review · r3 i? Retrieval practice benefits learners regardless of trait anxiety level, but higher trait o (qualifies)
Cynthia J. Miller 2015 q2 · causal · r1 i? Dental students in a revised low-stress TBL format scored higher on the individual summati (qualifies); Dental students in a revised low-stress TBL format reported lower stress and frustration t (qualifies)

Discussion

Learner Variables

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id test-anxiety-negative-exam-performance
title Test anxiety is negatively associated with exam performance, and no moderation by proctoring was detected
description Test anxiety is negatively associated with exam performance, and no moderation by proctoring was detected
status review
evidence_strength moderate
newest_evidence 2022
source_checked 2026-10-19
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-12
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — conijn-2022

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