Teaching Strategies to Reduce Test Anxiety among MSW Students Preparing for Licensure

ABSTRACT Many students report increasing test anxiety in the months before taking the national social work licensure exam. We evaluate whether adding a test-anxiety-reduction module to an online exam preparation course reduces MSW students’ test anxiety. A non-equivalent pretest-posttest control-group design was used to compare 42 students who did not participate in the course (Group 1), 16 students who enrolled in the course and completed the test-taking strategies module only (Group 2), and 15 students who enrolled in the course and completed both the test-taking strategies module and the new test-anxiety-reduction module (Group 3) on test anxiety. The post-hoc comparison analysis showed Group 3 differed from Group 1: students who completed the test-taking and test-anxiety-reduction modules experienced a greater reduction in test anxiety than students who did not enroll in the course. The other comparison tests were not statistically significant (Group 1 v. Group 2; Group 2 v. Group 3). Preparing students for the licensure exam by teaching both modules – test-taking and anxiety-reduction strategies – appears to benefit MSW students, with modest costs – in time and money – for social work programs.