Situaciones y respuestas de ansiedad escolar más temidas en el alumnado chileno de Educación Secundaria

Résumé

From interactive-dimensional approach, school anxiety can be explained as a cognitive response, psychophysiological and behavioral, expressed facing school situations with great pressure like school failure, school violence or academic and social assessment. The purpose of this study was to analyze the responses and most dreaded school situations in a sample of Chilean high school students, according to gender. The sample was comprised of 4156 adolescents, 1950 boys and 2206 girls (46.9% and 53.1%, respectively) between 13 and 18 years (M = 15.31; SD = 1.42). School Anxiety Inventory (IAES), which measures anxiety responses (cognitive, psychophysiological and behavioral), situations that generate anxiety (school failure and punishment, school violence and academic and social assessment) and a total score. Data were analyzed following a cross-sectional design and applying t tests to establish the differences and d tests to estimate the magnitude of these differences. The results indicate that girls have higher levels of school anxiety than boys in all the studied factors and the total score, with higher scores on cognitive responses, especially in the item “I think I should have worked harder” and also, in situations related to school failure, mainly, in the item “if I repeat course”. These outcomes support the results obtained in previous studies and allow improving the understanding of situations that limit a regular social, academic and personal development in Chilean students.