Test Anxiety and Its Impact on Students' Performance in Clinical Competency Examination at the End of the General Medical Course in Tehran Medical Sciences Islamic Azad University

Anxiety is a phenomenon that is intensified nowadays along with the high emphasis of educational systems on tests. Hence, it can disrupt the correct performance of the learner in the test position. The purpose of this study was to determine the test anxiety and its effect on the performance of students in the clinical competency test of the end of the general medical course at Tehran Islamic Azad University in the academic year 2017-2018. The research method was a descriptive-correlational design. In addition, a total of 270 graduate students were selected by available sampling method. For data collection, demographic questionnaire, test anxiety Sarason (1977) and the results of clinical competency test were used. Using the logistic regression and software 22SPSS, the status of relationships between the variables of research was examined from respondents' point of view. Accordingly, the results showed that test anxiety (mild, moderate and severe) had a significant effect on students' performance in the clinical competency test of the end of the general medical course in Tehran Islamic Azad University during the academic year 2017-2018 (p <0.05). Considering the fact that examination may cause anxiety among students, planning for effective management of test anxiety in students is necessary and should be noticed.