COPING STRATEGY ANALYSIS:

A NEW APPROACH TO STUDYING MATHEMATICS ANXIETY

Fred Peskoff, Ed.D.

Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York

fpeskoff@aol.com

The purpose of this study, the second in a series of studies on coping strategies, was to evaluate the relationship between level of mathematics anxiety and the strategies chosen to cope with it. Two-hundred seventy-nine college students enrolled in either a remedial algebra course or a nonremedial precalculus course completed the Composite Math Anxiety Scale in order to provide a mathematics anxiety score. Afterwards, the students rated ten Likert type coping strategies with regard to frequency of use and helpfulness (or value).

A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed on the student data. The independent variables were mathematics anxiety (high or low), and course enrollment (remedial or nonremedial). The dependent variables were the ten coping strategies, each of which was rated for frequency of use and helpfulness. Low mathematics anxiety students utilized and valued the majority of coping strategies more than did high mathematics anxiety students and algebra students did so more than precalculus students. Completing homework assignments on time, letting your instructor know if you don't understand the course material, setting aside extra study time before exams, and asking questions in class received the highest ratings. This cluster of strategies was characterized as approach strategies inasmuch as they all focus upon confronting the stressful situation at hand (i.e. the study of mathematics) in comparison to avoidance strategies in which the student attempts to reduce anxiety by at least temporarily leaving the stressful situation (such as exercising to reduce tension) and returning to it later when he or she feels better.