Investigating the Relationship between Executive Functions and Academic Stress and Exam Anxiety of Students

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between executive functions and academic stress and exam anxiety of students. Method: According to the method of data collection, the method of the present research is a descriptive (non-experimental) research and is of correlational type. The statistical population of this research consists of all the female students of the first year of high school in the ۱۳th district of Tehran. Among the elementary schools of the ۱۳th district, three schools were selected in an accessible manner. Therefore, ۱۵۰ students were considered as the population. The sample size was ۱۰۸ people using Morgan's table. In order to measure the executive functions of the standard Coolidge questionnaire with ۱۹ items, the test anxiety questionnaire by Friedman and Jacob (۱۹۹۷) with ۲۳ items and to measure academic stress. Also, the way to measure academic stress is the academic stress questionnaire of Zazhakova, Lynch and Spanshad (۲۰۰۹), which has ۲۰ five-choice questions. The data of this research was done using inferential statistics (Spearman correlation coefficient and regression) using SPSS ۲۳ software. Findings: Based on the obtained results, it was found that executive functions are related to academic stress and exam anxiety of students. Also, the results showed that executive functions generally affect academic stress by ۳۵%. In addition, executive functions generally affect exam anxiety by ۱۳%.

Keywords:

Executive Functions , Academic Stress , Exam Anxiety