The impact of anxiety on undergraduate students’ outcomes during prosthetic exam

Introduction
Anxiety is a natural reaction to stress, and anxiety due to a test impair knowledge and negatively influence examination performance. The subject of prosthetic dentistry is vast and difficult, requiring a high level of specialized expertise in areas of clinical dentistry that involve very difficult processes. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the impact of exam’s anxiety on students’ experience and performance during pros­thodontics exam.

Material and methods
There were 790 students enrolled into the study. Before opening the exam papers, all students completed a questionnaire. Likert scale, ranging 1 to 5, was used to assess the amount of anxiety. Link between student’s degree and student’s anxiety was determined with Kandall’s tau test, and comparison between genders was determined using independent sample t-test. Level of significance was set at p < 0.05.

Results
Between student’s degree and anxiety level, there was a significant link (p < 0.05). Male and female degrees differed significantly (p < 0.05); male degrees (16.45) were higher than female degrees (15.33). Males experienced normal levels of anxiety, whereas females experienced anxiousness.

Conclusions
Anxiety can affect dentistry students during prosthodontic exams. All pupils experienced anxious­ness showing a mean level of anxiety. Male outcomes were better than females’, and males experienced typical levels of anxiety, whereas females experienced anxiousness.