MATHEMATICS ANXIETY AS A PREDICTOR OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN MATHEMATICS: THE MODERATING ROLE OF GENDER
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22715511Keywords:
Mathematics Anxiety, Academic Achievement, Gender, Moderation, Senior Secondary, StudentsAbstract
This study set out to examine how well Mathematics anxiety predicts the academic achievement of senior secondary school students in Mathematics, and whether gender moderates that prediction, with the Awka Education Zone of Anambra State, Nigeria, as its location. A correlational survey design of the predictive type was adopted. Three research questions and two null hypotheses tested at the 0.05 level guided the work. The population comprised 4,674 Senior Secondary Two students in 64 public schools, from which a multi-stage sampling procedure selected 350 students, 145 male and 205 female. A 20-item Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale, together with students’ termly achievement records in Mathematics, provided the data, and the scale yielded a Cronbach's alpha of .86. Simple linear regression, hierarchical regression, and subgroup regression were used for the analysis. The results showed that anxiety predicted achievement negatively and significantly, accounting for about a quarter of the variance in scores. Adding the anxiety-by-gender term brought no significant change, so gender did not moderate the relationship, and separate regressions for boys and girls confirmed a near-identical pattern. The study concluded that anxiety lowers achievement to much the same degree across gender, and recommended anxiety-easing teaching that reaches every learner.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Juliet Oluchukwu Uchendu, Dr. Albert Tochukwu Nwamaradi (Author)
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