A Comparative Study on the Effect of Emotion-Focused Therapy and Self-Perception Training on Test Anxiety

Abstract

The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effects of emotion-focused therapy (EFT) with self-perception training on test anxiety. The present study is an applied research in terms of purpose with pretest-posttest with a control group design. The statistical population in this study consisted of female high school students of grade 2 in Ardabil. Multistep cluster sampling was used for sampling purposes. Out of two Educational Districts, one was selected randomly, 4 out of all schools of the district, two classes of each school, and 30 individuals of each class were selected randomly. The sample consisted of 50 students (25 students in the experimental group and under emotion-focused therapy, and 25 students in the control group). The data collection instrument in this study was Sarason's Test Anxiety Scale (TAS) (1984). The validity and reliability of the scale were already measured. The reliability of the retest was obtained at 0.88, internal consistency was obtained at 0.95, and criterion validity was obtained at 0.72. To test the effectiveness of interventions, multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used. Also, a one-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to observe the statistical defaults of MANCOVA. Levene test and Box Test were used to test the normality of distribution. Tukey test was used to compare the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. The results showed higher effectiveness of self-perception therapy compared to emotion-focused therapy in terms of explanation of the hypotheses. Hence, it could be claimed that the subjects can control emotions in addition to the achievement of locus of control in the self-perception method.