Anxiety and performance in high-achieving adolescents: associations among 8 general and specific anxiety measures and 13 school grades

The current study explores anxiety-academic performance associations across eight domain-general and domain-specific (e.g. maths) anxiety measures and 13 school subjects in a large (N= ~800) sample of schoolchildren (Mage =15.26), selected for high achievement in STEM and other domains. Our data showed that all anxiety measures load onto single general anxiety factor, explaining 51% of variance. Regression analysis showed that domain-general anxiety did not explain much variance in academic outcomes, while domain-specific anxiety explained variance in respective domains. The results demonstrated that the negative link between anxiety and performance is present even in adolescents with high academic achievement. Interestingly, worry correlated positively with performance after controlling for other anxiety measures. The study provides new insights into anxiety-performance links that can be used for further development of measures and educational interventions.