Relationship of mathematics anxiety and mathematics confidence among engineering students

Abstract

It is widely documented that mathematics anxiety is one of the factors that influence the learning of mathematics. Mathematical anxiety can cause one to forget and loose mathematics confidence. In this paper we investigate the predicting role of mathematics anxiety components on mathematics confidence among fresh engineering students. The research population consisted of students who are studying civil, electronic and mechanical engineering at Bahonar University of Kerman. A total of 182 first year engineering students were selected from the population by multi-stage clustered sampling. A survey questionnaire to measure math anxiety and math confidence was distributed to collect quantitative data. The results show that two mathematics anxiety components, namely mathematics anxiety evaluation and social mathematics anxiety contribute significantly in predicting mathematics confidence.