Gender Difference in Test Anxiety among University Students in Jaffna, Srilanka

Testing is an integral part of the learning process and must be properly devised to evaluate learning properly. While some anxiety is normal in a test situation and even helpful as it sharpens concentration and alertness, intense anxiety leads to poor performance affecting learning and grades so that becomes a problem. This problem could be differentially perceived by University male and female students. Hence the present study, The Suinn Test Anxiety behaviour scale (1971) was chosen for this research. It was individually administered to sixty Jaffna University Arts faculty students. The data was analyzed in terms of Mean, sd and t ratio. Result indicates that there is a significant gender difference in test anxiety. It is concluded that female university students compared to their male counterparts have more test anxiety.