No German Angst in German students? We tried studying anxiety in German university and high school students, but found very little

Anxiety levels are said to be at all-time highs among students in high schools and universities. Because of such previous findings, we set out to study anxiety in learning situations in eight German university lectures and one German high school. Unexpectedly, we barely found any anxiety-provoking learning situations, and even fewer students endorsing feeling anxious on average across their learning situations.Situational anxiety was measured within ongoing lessons and lectures with the experience sampling method (ESM). Eighty-seven high school students provided 1,627 ESM surveys and on average 20.76 ESM surveys per student (sample 1). One hundred and fifty-three university students provided 3,149 ESM surveys and on average 20.58 ESM surveys per student (samples 2-9). Contrary to our expectations, ratings of situational anxiety were very low during most lessons, students, and across all samples. High school students reported no or minimal anxiety in 93.0% of all learning situations. In the eight series of university lectures, feelings of anxiety were denied in 76.5% to 96.0% of all learning situations. When university students were asked to describe their feelings about their studies in their own words in open-ended text boxes, only 1% of the responses mentioned feelings of anxiety. We conclude that by using ESM, the study uncovered barely any learning situations in which German high school and university students reported feelings of anxiety. We discuss how this finding can be reconciled with the contrasting findings of other studies identifying students’ anxiety as a leading reason for mental health impairment and counseling needs.