Diversity and anxiety: A case study on collaborative testing

In order to reduce students´ test anxiety, collaborative testing was suggested as an evaluation strategy. However, few studies have focused on testing group construction, especially when an important factor, i.e., group diversity is taken into consideration. In this paper we conducted a case study to assess the association between group diversity and test anxiety in collaborative testing. The results observed may indicate that: 1) around 20% of students suffered from test anxiety to some extent in either an individual test or a collaborative test; 2) collaborative testing could alleviate test anxiety, whereas the effect is not statistically significant; 3) there exists a moderate positive correlation between group diversity and test anxiety in collaborative testing. The results of the study may suggest limiting group diversity in collaborative testing in order to alleviate test anxiety.