How do you measure maths anxiety?

Today I was asked: 'how can we measure maths anxiety?' The original research measure tool is a 98 -item questionnaire, known as MARS (maths anxiety rating scale). There are shorter versions, but you would need to pay to use the MARS. (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12674278)

One alternative is to use a 10-item questionnaire derived from the work of Fennema and Sherman, known as the MAS (maths anxiety scale, Betz 1978). A copy of this is freely available for members of the University from the University Library.

Or if you just wish to gauge roughly how big the problem is in your learning community, for example, to decide where best to try an intervention, you can ask the question:

“On a scale from 1 to 10, how maths anxious are you?”

Núñez-Peña, M., Guilera, G and Suárez-Pellicioni, M (2014) ‘The Single-Item Math Anxiety Scale: An Alternative Way of Measuring Mathematical Anxiety’ Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 2014, 32(4), 306-317.

Sue Johnston-Wilder : 10 Oct 2014 14:21 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem