Situations and answers of school anxiety more threatened in the chilean student of secondary education

Abstract

From the interactive-three-dimensional approach, school anxiety can be explained as a cognitive, psychophysiological or behavioral response, expressed in high pressure school situations such as school failure, school violence or academic and social evaluation. The purpose of this study was to analyze the most feared responses and school situations in a sample of Chilean Secondary Education students, according to gender. The sample was comprised of 4156 adolescents, 1950 boys and 2206 girls (46.9% and 53.1%, respectively) with ages between 13 and 18 years (M = 15.31, SD = 1.42). To evaluate the School Anxiety Inventory (IAES), which measures anxiety responses (cognitive, psychophysiological and behavioral), situations that generate anxiety (school failure and punishment, aggression, school and social evaluation) and a total score. The data were analyzed following a cross-sectional design and applying t tests to establish the differences and tests d to estimate the magnitude of said differences. The results indicate that girls present higher levels of school anxiety than boys in all the factors studied and in the total score, with higher scores in cognitive responses, especially in the item "I think I should have worked more", as well as also in situations related to school failure, mainly in the "if I repeat course" item. These results support those obtained in previous research and allow improving the understanding of situations that limit the normal academic, personal and social development of Chilean students.