Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).

Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).

Math anxiety (MA) affects students of all age groups. Because of its effects on children's academic development, the need to recognize its early manifestations has been highlighted. We designed a European-Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA; Wu et al. (2012)), and a...

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Autores principales: Noelia Sánchez-Pérez, Luis J Fuentes, Carmen González-Salinas
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Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/f332da53fe8f4218ba4e9785d2937365
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:f332da53fe8f4218ba4e9785d29373652021-12-02T20:15:11ZAssessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0255777https://doaj.org/article/f332da53fe8f4218ba4e9785d29373652021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255777https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Math anxiety (MA) affects students of all age groups. Because of its effects on children's academic development, the need to recognize its early manifestations has been highlighted. We designed a European-Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA; Wu et al. (2012)), and assessed its psychometric properties in a sample of children aged 7 to 12 years. The participants (967 typically developing children) were elementary school students recruited from ten schools. Children reported their general and math anxiety levels in an individual session and performed nonverbal IQ and math abilities subtests in a group session. Teachers reported the final math grades. The psychometric indices obtained, and the resulting factor structure revealed that the European-Spanish version of the SEMA developed in this study is a reliable and valid measure to evaluate MA in children from 3rd to 6th grade. Moreover, we explored gender differences, that resulted in small effect sizes, which disappeared when controlling for trait anxiety. Differences across grades were found for both global MA and the numerical processing anxiety factor but not for the situational and performance anxiety factor. Finally, MA was negatively associated with students' math achievement, although the strength of the associations varied with the MA measure selected, the kind of math achievement analyzed, and the school stage considered. Our findings highlight the relevance of MA in elementary school and highlight the need for an early identification of students at risk of suffering MA to palliate the negative consequences of MA in children's cognitive and academic development.Noelia Sánchez-PérezLuis J FuentesCarmen González-SalinasPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 8, p e0255777 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Medicine
R
Science
Q
spellingShingle Medicine
R
Science
Q
Noelia Sánchez-Pérez
Luis J Fuentes
Carmen González-Salinas
Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).
description Math anxiety (MA) affects students of all age groups. Because of its effects on children's academic development, the need to recognize its early manifestations has been highlighted. We designed a European-Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA; Wu et al. (2012)), and assessed its psychometric properties in a sample of children aged 7 to 12 years. The participants (967 typically developing children) were elementary school students recruited from ten schools. Children reported their general and math anxiety levels in an individual session and performed nonverbal IQ and math abilities subtests in a group session. Teachers reported the final math grades. The psychometric indices obtained, and the resulting factor structure revealed that the European-Spanish version of the SEMA developed in this study is a reliable and valid measure to evaluate MA in children from 3rd to 6th grade. Moreover, we explored gender differences, that resulted in small effect sizes, which disappeared when controlling for trait anxiety. Differences across grades were found for both global MA and the numerical processing anxiety factor but not for the situational and performance anxiety factor. Finally, MA was negatively associated with students' math achievement, although the strength of the associations varied with the MA measure selected, the kind of math achievement analyzed, and the school stage considered. Our findings highlight the relevance of MA in elementary school and highlight the need for an early identification of students at risk of suffering MA to palliate the negative consequences of MA in children's cognitive and academic development.
format article
author Noelia Sánchez-Pérez
Luis J Fuentes
Carmen González-Salinas
author_facet Noelia Sánchez-Pérez
Luis J Fuentes
Carmen González-Salinas
author_sort Noelia Sánchez-Pérez
title Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).
title_short Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).
title_full Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).
title_fullStr Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).
title_full_unstemmed Assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA).
title_sort assessing math anxiety in elementary schoolchildren through a spanish version of the scale for early mathematics anxiety (sema).
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/f332da53fe8f4218ba4e9785d2937365
work_keys_str_mv AT noeliasanchezperez assessingmathanxietyinelementaryschoolchildrenthroughaspanishversionofthescaleforearlymathematicsanxietysema
AT luisjfuentes assessingmathanxietyinelementaryschoolchildrenthroughaspanishversionofthescaleforearlymathematicsanxietysema
AT carmengonzalezsalinas assessingmathanxietyinelementaryschoolchildrenthroughaspanishversionofthescaleforearlymathematicsanxietysema
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