The Comparison of the Effectiveness of Systematic Desensitization, Study Skills and Combination Method in Decreasing Test Anxiety

Introduction: The test anxiety is a situational anxiety that it can decrease ability of evaluation or test. This study was conducted to determine comparison between systematic desensitization, study skills and combination method both of them in reducing test anxiety in male students with test anxiety.
Method: The design of present study is pretest-posttest Pseudo Experiment with control group and random assignment. The statistical population of this study was included all of male students of Islamic Azad university, Yasuj Branch, during 2010-2011. Since the size of male students was 6000, the sample size appointed to 361 students based on Kerjce and Morgan’s table. The samples were selected through stratified random sampling method and 64 of them with test anxiety were selected according to the Speilberger's test anxiety questionnaire and classified in three experimental groups and one control group. Data were analyzed by ANCOVA covariance analysis.
Results: The mean age of participants was 23.58 years with age range between 19 to 32. The results showed that there was significant difference between experimental and control group in reducing test anxiety in systematic desensitization (p=0.0001), study skills (p=0.0001) and combination method (0.0001). Also, the results indicated that the combination method was more effective in decreasing test anxiety.
Conclusion: According to the results of this study it can be concluded that although systematic desensitization and study skills were decreased test anxiety but the combination method is more effective in decreasing test anxiety as a treatment method.