Dr. Ruolin Hu is a Lecturer and a Researcher at UCL IoE, University College London's Faculty of Education and Society, and is the program leader for quantitative research methods at the Centre for Doctoral Education.
Taking a test, especially for high-stakes purposes, is often an anxiety provoking experience. Many of us can vividly recall as if it was yesterday the tying of the knot in our stomach, the increased heartbeat, and the sweaty palms just as we readied ourselves for a major test at school.
If you are, like me, an anxious test-taker, you might have wondered: What is at the root of this anxiety? Does this anxiety differ when the test environment changes, for example, from a test-center to one’s own home? And more importantly, how does this anxiety affect my test performance?
The good news is you are definitely not alone in your wondering. Researchers from psychology, education as well as linguistics, have been interested in test anxiety as a unique, situation-dependent phenomenon ever since the 1960s!
What causes test anxiety—and why it matters
We know that test anxiety has multiple layers and subcomponents that interact with one another.
1. Worry
This isn’t just your garden-variety nervousness. It is the stream of negative, self-critical thoughts running through your head: What if I fail? Everyone else knows this. My future depends on this score. These worries don’t just feel bad—they’re stealing the mental resources your brain needs for the actual test. By diverting your focus away from solving problems and toward self-doubt, research shows worry directly increases the likelihood of under-performance.
2. Emotionality
This is what you actually feel in your body during a test (remember the sweaty palms? the pounding heart?). Emotionality includes the sudden, subjective feeling of tension and the objective physical symptoms that signal anxiety.
3. Irrelevant Thinking
Unlike worry—which is at least about the test—Irrelevant Thinking is when your mind wanders completely off-topic, where your attention is pulled away from the test task you need to focus on.
We also know that numerous studies looking across all types of students—from elementary school right up to PhD candidates—report a consistent, significant inverse relationship between test anxiety and test performance: the higher the former, the lower the latter.
How we studied anxiety in DET, IELTS, and TOEFL
Because virtually all previous research on test anxiety looked only at test center or classroom-based situations, we actually know very little about how this anxiety manifests itself when a test is taken at home, such as the Duolingo English Test (DET). This is hardly surprising, as technologies allowing large-scale at-home high-stakes testing are relatively new inventions!
Would the familiarity and comfort of at-home testing mitigate some of that anxious feeling we all dread? What’s more, does test anxiety affect test performance differently when the test is taken at-home compared to a test center?
My team and I conducted a test anxiety study to answer exactly these questions. Below, I share our findings.
At-home vs in-center: where test takers feel most comfortable
We collected data from 551 test takers who took both the DET and another test—either an IELTS or a TOEFL—at a test center. Our sample was rich and diverse, capturing various demographics, different reasons for testing, and an incredible array of backgrounds, including speakers of over 65 different first languages!
These test takers did not take the tests for the purpose of this study; instead, they took the tests because they needed the results for their own purposes, like studying abroad, giving us a sneak peek at how authentic test taking affects test takers in a real-life context.
To measure the anxiety experienced on tests, we designed a parallel survey that captured participants’ worrying thoughts, emotional experience, and irrelevant thinking on DET, IELTS or TOEFL. They responded to items describing these feelings on a 1-4 scale for three time points: before, during, and after each exam.
We also collected test results directly from the DET, and used test takers’ self-reported IELTS or TOEFL scores.
How anxiety affects test performance across DET, IELTS, and TOEFL
We found test takers consistently experienced less worry before, during and after taking the DET at home, compared to before, during, and after taking an exam at an IELTS test center or a TOEFL test center. They also unanimously reported experiencing less emotional reactions as well as less frequent irrelevant thinking for DET compared to IELTS or TOEFL. These differences were actually much bigger when comparing the DET to the TOEFL than to the IELTS. This tells us two things:
First, familiarity and comfort of at-home testing seem to soak up some of that high-stakes anxiety we all dread. Why? We suspect the sterile, silent pressure of a traditional test center actually makes things worse. Being surrounded by other equally stressed test takers can project a collective feeling of doom, amplifying your own anxiety. In contrast, your own home offers an organic and safe environment to keep your anxiety at bay.
Meanwhile, let’s not forget that the DET is much shorter. And if you have taken any marathon-length test yourself, like I did, for varied purposes, you know how much psychological relief a shorter test can bring about! A shorter test reduces the possibility of your brain going into overload and mental fatigue—both notorious triggers for spiking anxiety during those multi-hour tests.
What surprised us about at-home testing
This is where things get truly intriguing. We ran the numbers, and the answer is clear: test anxiety is a consistent predictor of lower scores across DET, IELTS and TOEFL. In our study, even after factoring out basic differences like gender, first language, and test intent, worry remained a consistent and serious threat to performance.
Here’s what a one-unit increase in worry would look like in terms of actual score drops:
- DET: A decrease of about 9 points (a significant drop, equivalent to 6% of the total score range).
- IELTS: A decrease of 0.24 bands (equivalent to 3%).
- TOEFL: A decrease of about 9 points (equivalent to 8%).
Considering these are important and costly tests, linked to admission and immigration status, these drops are definitely not trivial!
Why environment isn’t the only factor in performance
Intuitively, we might think that if test anxiety is lower when the test taking is at home, compared to in a test center, then it would have less of an impact on test performance, right? Surprisingly, this is not the story our data is telling us.
We found that test takers reported less anxiety overall for the at-home DET, and this anxiety predicted their test DET scores. Interestingly, anxiety at IELTS centers and TOEFL centers also predicted IELTS and TOEFL scores in our data.
What does this all mean? Frankly, we are not too sure, as this is the first ever study that compared at-home English proficiency testing to the in-center equivalent.
Our team’s take is that, even when the overall testing environment is comfortable, the impact of test anxiety on test performance appears to be more nuanced than we assumed it to be. We believe that even with reduced environmental stressors, your internal negative thoughts continue to interfere with your focus. They are the true culprit of underperformance.