Anxiety and Performance in an MSW Research and Statistics Course

Data from 162 MSW students were analyzed to test the propositions that social work students have high levels of anxiety about research and statistics and that this anxiety has a detrimental effect on students' performance in a required research and statistics course. Levels of anxiety about research and statistics were very varied and only 12% of the stuents bad "very high" levels of anxiety. The relationships between such anxiety and performance in the course was not statistically significant. Anxiety reduction activities may be appropriate for humane reasons but the activities are not likely to increase students' learning of research and statistics.