Test Anxiety Research in India: Twentieth Century in Retrospect

The twentieth century has been called "the age of anxiety". However, the concern with anxiety phenomena is as old as the history of humanity. For many years, theories of anxiety were rooted primarily in the experiences of clinical workers and the insight of the sensitive observers of the West The nebulous character of the phenomena, prompted many researchers to focus their attention on the sperific sources of anxiety in social, public speaking and test situations. The 1950s saw the spawning of test anxiety research in earnest, which began at Yale University in 1952. Almost two decades after this initiation, the first attempt to understand the antecedent of test anxiety of schoolchildren was made by Nijbawan (1972). Almost 12 years after this, a first comprehensive review of research on test anxiety was reported by Sharma and Rao (1984). This article is another attempt, scanning the brief overview of research on test anxiety in India during the twentieth century. Implications for future research in the twenty-first century have also been put forth.