ABSTRACT:
Background: Anxiety is our body’s natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear or apprehension. Exam anxiety is the experience of feeling an intense moment of fear or panic before and/or during an exam or assessment. Aim: A quasi-experimental approach was used to assess the effectiveness of cognitive behavior therapy on test anxiety among students studying at selected nursing institutes of Punjab. Materials and Methods: A quasi-experimental pre-test post-test control group design was adopted to conduct the research study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 130 BSc nursing 3rd year and 4th year students from two different institutes assigned into Experimental and Control group. Tools were used for the study socio-demographic sheet, test profile sheet, standardized tool (Test Anxiety Questionnaire by Nist and Diehl). It was found reliable (0.70). Cognitive Behavior Therapy was given once a day for 60 minutes to experimental group for 7 days regularly whereas no intervention was given to control group. Post –test was taken from on (day-8). Results: The data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings revealed that pre test scores in experimental and control group were 28±5.01 and 29.76±4.58 respectively. After intervention, posttest scored in experimental and control group was 15.29±2.44 and 29.91±4.52 respectively. The difference observed between pretest and posttest anxiety score was significant (p<0.001). Conclusion: The findings of present study suggest that cognitive behavior therapy was a valuable psychotherapy technique in reducing test anxiety among nursing students.