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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Assessment, Testing and Applied Measurement
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1567709
Extended time on an unspeeded assessment improves neither test anxiety nor performance
Provisionally accepted- University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, United States
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The amount of time students are given to complete an assessment is a pragmatic element to the assessment itself. Assessments that provide the vast majority (>80%) of students sufficient time for completion are said to be "unspeeded". However, even if an assessment is unspeeded students may experience test anxiety if the assessment is timed, and test anxiety can cause students to underperform relative to their ability. While providing unlimited time to complete assessments would alleviate anxiety and improve test scores, this is unrealistic in most classroom settings. The current study assessed whether increasing the time students had to complete a timed, unspeeded exam would improve performance by lowering test anxiety. Test anxiety surveys were administered before and after midterm exams in two sections of an undergraduate classroom: an unspeeded control section which had 1 hour to complete the exam, and a treatment section which had 2 hours to complete the exam. Results indicate that doubling the amount of time students have on an already-unspeeded exam improved neither test performance nor test anxiety. However, students in the treatment condition were significantly less likely to report wanting more time on the exam in a postassessment survey.
Keywords: Test performance, undergraduate, Biology, Test time, test anxiety
Received: 27 Jan 2025; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Marcus, Mueller and Cooke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: James Edward Cooke, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.