Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

Date of Award

Spring 4-11-2018

Program

Psychology

Supervisor

Dr. Anne Barnfield

Abstract

The purpose of the study was two-fold: to confirm the finding that anxiety and stress increases as exams draw near, and to provide evidence that smokers will have greater increases in anxiety and stress than non-smokers, as well as increased smoking urges as exam draws near, to deal with the related increase in anxiety and stress. To investigate this, participants were asked to fill out the DASS-21 at three-time points (4 weeks, 2.5 weeks, and 1 week) before the Psychology 1000 midterm examination. Smoking urges of smokers was also to be assessed, however, due to lack of smoking participants, no smoking data was collected. Results did not confirm the finding that student’s anxiety and stress increase as the exam draws near. ANOVA indicated there was not a significant difference in anxiety and stress scores between T1, T2 or T3. Further analysis indicated that the anxiety and stress scores for this sample were significantly higher than the normative data for the DASS-21 indicating a possible ceiling effect; implications of these results are discussed.

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