REDUCING TEST ANXIETY

WITH STRESS BALLS

GILLIAN MYERS AND JORDAN HOLDAWAY
INTRODUCTION
Test anxiety is defined as an acute stress due to an examination or any form of testing that individual’s
experience in a school environment. When students advance in their educational career, they encounter
multiple exams they seem life changing or threating; especially towards the freshmen students who are
adapting form presumable no studying and little homework to more than they can handle. Although this is
acute stress, it is important to focus on the long term affects as they could be detrimental on development
of the cognitive process. Other experiments tend to focus on college level students and elementary kids,
but we believe that high school is the most pivotal time of student's career. Since the environment and
worth ethic in high school is vast, we are using what's most applicable to us.
Stress balls have been used frequently to relieve stress because when the body is stressed it tenses
up, the stress ball promotes you to squeeze and release and that sudden release of tension in your
muscles causes you to feel less stressed. This study will help advance our knowledge of stress balls
and its psychological effect on the body. Of course, the long-term use of these stress balls can cause a
weakness in grip strength and tendonitis complaints like tennis elbow. But we will find the
psychological connection to the use of the stress balls to find a device or mind method like the ball
but that has less negative side effects. We give students surveys before and after their test that they
knew of beforehand from that data we will see how it effects the subjects.
RESEARCH QUESTION

Do the use of stress balls help

reduce test anxiety?
HYPOTHESIS

If our results are skewed left, then stress balls help reduce
test anxiety.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS

Figure 1: Pre Survey Figure 2: Post Survey Figure 3: To make the stress balls,
we put the end of the funnel into
a balloon and poured flour
through the funnel.
MATERIALS AND METHODS CONT.

In our experiment we originally selected four class rooms that would have a test given to them by their
teacher. We gave them the consent forms and asked for the participant to return them on the day of the
test. Unfortunately we were only able to get 2 of those classes. They were given Survey 1 and Survey 2 on
both days, Survey 1 was taken before a test and Survey 2 was taken after. We chose four class rooms, one
geometry class and three biology classes. We anticipated about 35 kids in each class room and this became
our estimated number of stress balls. For this experiment we gave out human consent forms along with a
sheet attached to it with more information about our experiment for the parents. The paper described the
limits of our experiment and that their participation is not mandatory, they could quit at any time, and we
will not know any of their child’s names connected to their survey answers. We gave them three days to
return the forms to their teachers and those who did not return the form signed did not participate in the
study. The first day of testing started with no stress balls, Survey 1 was given out before they took the test
and Survey 2 was given out after they took the test. The next day the same steps were repeated but with
stress balls.
LITERATURE REVIEW

After studying the effects of stress balls on the attention span of middle school students, Stalvey, Sheryll (2006) came
to a conclusion that the scores of students and low test anxiety had a strong correlation, and that their test scores and
predictions improved. Another study about under-graduate students and procrastination levels, Johnson, Ronald E.
(2001) showed the same results. However, Maralani, Farnaz (2016) says it is because our hierarchy of psychological
needs have not been met. This supports Malsow’s hierarchy of needs and his self-actualization stage, that if we do not
have our most basic needs met, we will not reach our full potential. Maralani states there is an indirect relationship
between test anxiety and our psychological needs. She took 2 nd and 3rd year high school students and gave them a
questionnaire of 4 subjects about their emotional state, cognitive abilities, behavior and agency. Her results showed
academic achievement and psychological needs have a direct impact on each other, supporting Johnson’s
questionnaire. Johnson’s questionnaire consisted of gender, race, procrastination, emotional stability, and test grade
average. His results support both sides, but mainly Stalvey. Her test on attitudes towards task completion supports his
results about predictions, that their predictions increased when given stress balls. While both experiments support
stress balls increase test anxiety, Maralani says we need psychological support more than an object.
 MILLER DAY 1
• Pre data is skewed to the right and the
post data is skewed to the left.
• Post data has a higher average because of
the higher levels, showing more test
anxiety also causes the standard deviation
to increase because of the larger variety.
• The mean increased by .38 so our results
were not statistically significant.
• The largest increase was the Q3 and IQR
by one point. 50% of the levels stayed the
same, 18.75% increased and
31.25% decreased.
• The Pre Day 1 is evenly split with 25% for
people who ranked a 1-4, 0% ranked 5.
25% ranked 1, 37.5% ranked 2, 6.25%
ranked 3, 25% ranked 4, 12.5% ranked 5.
 MILLER DAY 2
• Shows overall higher data.
• Added stress balls and it shows
higher stress levels than without.
• Both skewed left, but the post
data shows a larger deviation
causing the numbers to skew left.
• 62.5% of their levels stayed the
same, 12.5% increased and 25%
decreased.
• On Pre Day 2, 6.25% ranked 1,
31.25% ranked 2, 25% ranked 3,
25% ranked 4, and 12.5% ranked
5.
• 12.5% ranked 1, 25% ranked 2,
31.25% ranked 3, 12.5% ranked 4,
and 18.75% ranked 5 for the Post
Day 2.
PRE MILLER DAY 1
•This is day 1 of the data set with the stress
balls, these are their predictions on the X-axis
of what their test score will be.
•The Pre Day 1 predictions are skewed left,
this means they think their scores will be
lower while the post day 1 is fairly
symmetrical.
•The difference is the means is 2.5, the largest
average being 81.88 from the post survey.
Their mean increased after the test without
the stress ball by, the largest difference is the
IQR being a –17.50 decrease.
•50% of their predictions stayed the same,
31.25% increased and 18.75%
decreased. 6.25% ranked 60, 25% ranked 70,
37.5% ranked 80, 31.25% ranked 90, and 0%
ranked 100, this is our pre-day 1 set of data.
• 0% ranked 60, 18.75% ranked 70, 56.25%
ranked 80, 12.5% ranked 90 and 100, this is
our post-day 1 predictions.
POST MILLER DAY
2
•Mean predictions surprisingly
decreased, and their standard deviation
went down by 2 points.
•The largest changes were the IQR, Q3 and
the median.
•50% had the same predictions, 31.25%
had increased predictions and 18.75% had
decreased predictions. 18.75% ranked 60,
31.25% ranked 70, 18.75% ranked 80,
31.25% ranked 90, and 0% ranked 100.
This is our Pre Day 2 data set.
• 12.5% ranked 60, 43.75% ranked 70,
31.25% ranked 80, 12.5% ranked 90, 0%
ranked 100, this concludes are post-day 2
data.
WALSH PRE
Sample Std. Minim
Mean Q1 Median Q3 Max IQR
Size Dev. um

4.00
22 3.273 1.120 1.000 3.000 3.500 5.000 1.000
0

Their pretest survey average was 3.3, which is a higher score

on a pretest survey we expected. Because our scale was
ranked on a 1-5 a 3 on a pre survey. 9% ranked 1, 13.6%
ranked 2, 27% ranked 3, 40.9% ranked 4, 9% ranked 5.
CONCLUSION
We cannot say that our results correlate with our hypothesis because of the small population size,
however, our results were unexpected. When given a stress ball their level of test
anxiety increased, and their predictions decreased. Without a stress ball they seemed to be less anxious and
had better predictions about their grade, which goes against what the literature results said from other schools.
The difference between test anxiety levels were not statistically significant because the largest increase was by 1
point, however, the predictions had the most dramatic changes, the most noticeable change being the mean.
We could not say if our hypothesis could support a direct correlation between stress balls and anxiety because
of the lack of participants in our experiment. The experiment yielded 38 people in total, we would have about
100 but other participants failed to turn in the form on time and did not follow the directions given to them by
the teacher. Another error was not making our survey scale from 1-5 on all of them and some students study
more often than others, lowering their test anxiety. This leaves a large margin of error and the validity of our
findings may not be concrete. Stress balls seem to have little or negative effects against test anxiety, there are
other ways to reduce test anxiety like changing study habits or breathing exercises. Stress balls are commonly
used and sold on the market repeating they will relieve stress which we presume is false. Psychological parts like
belief perseverance and overconfidence could potentially play a role, other things like biological predispositions
to stress and gender have definite hinderances on the results of the study. Future research could include a
larger data set with more specific rules, we could also compare the grades of students in the study.
FUTURE RESEARCH

For future research, we will gather more information about the grades for
comparison. We will also include a larger data set to decrease any lurking
variables.
THANK YOU

• Mrs. Tatum
• Mrs. Allard
• Mrs. Heiges
• Mrs. Jones
• Mrs. Wright
• Mr. Shelton
• UPS people who were patient enough to print out over 400 copies of the
surveys and participation forms.