The mediating role of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in the relationship between perception of parent-child relationship and test anxiety in girls

Exam anxiety is a type of anxiety related to the situation and is experienced as an unpleasant experience and hinders the growth and academic progress of the student. Therefore, it is very important to identify the factors that can prevent exam anxiety. The aim of the present study was to determine the mediating role of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in the relationship between parent-child relationship perception and test anxiety.

The research method was descriptive-correlational type. The statistical population of this research included all the female students of the second secondary school in Tehran in the academic year 2018-19, of which 330 were selected using the multi-stage cluster random sampling method. The research tools include parent-child relationship questionnaire; Sarason et al.'s test anxiety scale (1956) and Dawson and McInnery's (2004) cognitive and metacognitive strategies questionnaire. The structural equation modeling method was used to analyze the data.

The findings of the research showed that the perception of the father-child relationship (P=0.001, β=-0.120) and the perception of the mother-child relationship (P=0.001, β=-0.161) are indirectly related to exam anxiety.

It can be concluded that cognitive and metacognitive strategies play a mediating role in the relationship between the perception of parent-child relationship and test anxiety in girls.