Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Educational and Therapeutic Interventions on Mathematical Anxiety

Math anxiety is one of the most common anxiety types that students face during their studies and their performance is affected by it. Various treatment methods are used by researchers to reduce math anxiety. The purpose of this research is to examine the researches conducted in the field of the effect of therapeutic and educational methods on reducing students' math anxiety. The statistical population of the current research is all the available studies about the effectiveness of educational and therapeutic interventions on math anxiety. To perform meta-analysis between 1985 and 1999, 55 studies were identified, 28 studies were included in the analysis. Due to the fact that some studies used several variables or interventions, they were examined several times in the meta-analysis process. In the end, 33 effect sizes were obtained from the entire research. and analyzed with CMA2 software. The results of the analysis showed that the effect size of educational and therapeutic interventions on the general category of math anxiety was -1.41 and -1.58 respectively, which was statistically significant. Based on the size of the obtained effects, it can be stated that educational and therapeutic interventions based on Cohen's criterion have a very high effectiveness on math anxiety, and the use of therapeutic interventions for math anxiety is more effective. A meta-regression model was used to influence the moderating variable of gender on math anxiety. The results showed that the moderating role of gender is weak. Also, this study has given recommendations for using different interventions to improve math anxiety.