The Effect of Item Arrangement on Test Anxiety

The effect of three item arrangements on state test anxiety was studied using an actual classroom examination administered under power conditions. Examinations were distributed randomly to 128 graduate students in two courses. Separate one-way analyses of variance performed for each course revealed significant effects for item arrangement on anxiety. In one course, anxiety was higher for the hard-to-easy arrangement; in the other course, anxiety was higher for the random arrangement. That highest anxiety levels were associated with different arrangements in the two courses was explained in terms of homogeneity of content and perceived item difficulty. Results suggest that different item arrangements may elicit different levels of anxiety and that item arrangement may introduce a source of variance unrelated to content, thereby reducing the validity of achievement tests.