Anxiety and Educational Achievement

S ummary . This paper reports a study of the relations between anxiety and educational achievement in 310 11‐year‐old junior school pupils (170 boys, 140 girls). The instruments used were the Frost Self Description Questionnaire (which includes seven anxiety scales and a Denial scale), the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory, Progressive Matrices, Crichton Vocabulary and three NFER tests of reading and arithmetic. Product‐moment, additive multiple regression and Principal Components (with Varimax rotation) analyses are reported. The results demonstrate ( a ) a complex inter‐relationship of types of anxiety, types of achievement and sex of subject; ( b ) that no separate ‘general’ and ‘school’ anxiety factors emerge; ( c ) the necessity of using a ‘denial’ scale, and ( d ) absence of correlation between Eysenck's Neuroticism Scale and school achievement. A theoretical discussion of ‘General Emotionality’ and anxiety led to the conclusion that anxiety questionnaires are likely to measure (1) the likelihood of being threatened by the external world, and (2) a specific way of reacting to such threat.