Anxiety and Answer-Changing Behavior in Nursing Students.

Abstract

Background: Anxiety in college students, including nursing students, has increased significantly and has been implicated as a cause of lower academic achievement and answer-changing behavior. This study investigated the relationship between student anxiety and answer-changing behaviors.

Method: One hundred thirty-one nursing students from a large midwestern baccalaureate nursing program were enrolled in a quasiexperimental prospective research study. Data included demographics, analysis of student movement through the examination to identify changed answers, and completion of the PROMIS Short Form version 1.0-Emotional Distress-Anxiety 8a tool.

Results: PROMIS anxiety scores did not covary significantly with the rate of answer-changing behaviors including rate of negative changes.

Conclusion: This study did not identify a relationship between students' answer-changing behavior and anxiety. Future studies should evaluate other characteristics, such as confidence and level of examination preparation, as possible reasons for changing answers. [J Nurs Educ. 2023;62(6):351-354.].