Impact of Demographic Variables on Exam Anxiety and Academic Achievement among Secondary Grade Students: An Empirical Study

The major objective of this research study was to explore the gender, age and type of school impacts between Exam anxiety and academic achievement of students at the secondary grade level students. A sample of 117 secondary grade students those studying IX X, XI standard students those got, 50 % above academic achieving students and 125 students those got 50 % below academic achieving and their exam anxiety test scores, was purposefully and randomly selected from government and private school in khurda road, orissa. Data were collected by using the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) developed by nist and Diehls (1990. Pearson correlation, independent sample t- test statistics and ANOVA were run for data analysis. It was found that non-significant exists between boys and girls and private and government school, different age groups of 14, 15 and 16 years. There was significant negative correlation between exam anxiety and academic achievement. Results showed that no gender differences and age groups associated with exam anxiety and academic achievement Therefore, it is concluded that test anxiety is one of the factors which are responsible for students underachievement and low performance. There is no such difference among boys and girls and also mode of school and age groups. However, when exam anxiety increases academic performance decrease; low exam anxiety negatively correlated with academic achievement with good grades.