Diseño del controlador robusto

The fact that all the participants came from the same school may have introduced a ‘school’ variable. Conversely, had several schools participated, additional mediating variables would have come into play. It is worth speculating, whether outcomes would have been different, if the study had taken place in a comprehensive or a grammar school.

5.5 2.2 Sampling issues

Participation in the main study was compulsory, since the sessions were part of the educational curriculum. This introduced additional mediating variables such as differing motivation and engagement by the pupils. This fact became clear in the qualitative feedback of some of the participants who commented that they did not need input on the management of examination anxiety, since they were not anxious about exams and knew how to cope with them. These pupils participated in the sessions because they wanted to be helpful to the experimenter in contributing to the study, and if they found the activities to be entertaining. Some of the pupils did not engage with the sessions. They failed to listen, did not participate in the group discussions, or they chatted to each other. This fact illustrates the difficulties of carrying out a study of examination anxiety with a universal school based population, which includes pupils with

very low examination anxiety levels. A practical adaptation of these findings to the school curriculum on a preventative programme for examination anxiety has to take these aspects into account.

The same difficulties did not arise in the pilot study where the participants were highly motivated, since they had volunteered to participate in the study and had control over their participation.

Selective versus universal sample of participants

The interaction between initial anxiety levels and intervention effect shown by the results of the main study illustrates the differences of carrying out a study in a clinical setting, where pupils may be referred and have initial high anxiety levels, compared to a universal, school setting, where participants were randomly chosen. Preventative, educational programmes need to take into account that such interventions are not likely to get similar interest and engagement from all pupils and need to be adapted to the level of need and to individual differences of the pupils.

Perhaps a preventative, whole school PHSE programme on general aspects of life skills including anxiety and stress management could be supplemented by some more therapeutic smaller group work with self-referred volunteer pupils. This programme could be delivered by the School's support services, such as the Pupil Referral Units, Behaviour Support Services or the Educational Psychology Service. The main purpose of the preventative emphasis would be to create a climate in the School, in which emotions including anxiety are openly

Sample size

Samples in the main study were relatively small and allow only tentative generalisations from the findings. In spite of this, statistically significant intervention effects were emerging, which point to some robust effects involved.

5 5.2.3 Design issues

Intergroup comparison was by intertreatment comparison, i.e. controlling for the length of exposure in all four groups. It was difficult to control for the exact content of the sessions as well. The programme of the mixed method consisted of half the number of sessions (two sessions) of relaxation and half the number of sessions of CBT approaches. The other two groups had four sessions of relaxation (Group 2) and four sessions of CBT approaches (Group 4). It could be argued that the mixed group (Group 1) received two incomplete intervention sessions which did not add up to the sessions received by the other two experimental groups and were, therefore not comparable. In order to control for this fact, the experimental design would have had to include permutations of interventions such as including additional experimental groups receiving half the number of relaxation sessions and half the number of control sessions as well as half the number of CBT sessions and half the number of control sessions. The researcher was aware of this, but decided that such an experimental design would have been too cumbersome for real life research. There is scope for further research teasing out which particular element of the mixed sessions was effective, by comparing mixed sessions consisting of half of the PHSE attention control sessions and half each of the relaxation and CBT sessions.

5.5 2.4 Procedures

Session protocols and protocol integrity

The interventions were newly adapted to the school curriculum, and therefore clear protocols were required. There were not enough teachers or educational psychologists available to allow observation of the sessions in order to ensure session integrity. The comparability of the sessions was ensured by scripts, which were followed by the teachers, and by their training. The fact that sessions were led jointly by one teacher and the researcher ensured some comparability. In the future manuals will have to be developed which contain the interventions, which proved most successful in this study. If these interventions are to be offered to schools to be disseminated to pupils through a PSHE curriculum, they will have to be transparent and clearly documented, so that they can be generalised. Future research would have to look at the effectiveness of teacher-led interventions.

5.5.2.5 A comparison of therapeutic and educationai settings -

impiications and questions for future research

The present study investigated pupil-focused variables mediating exam anxiety rather than contextual variables such as the school environment. These environmental considerations were beyond the scope of the study and merit further research in a separate study.

In this study some of the differences between more therapeutic, selective and universal educational settings were illustrated quite clearly between the pilot

are open-ended and exploratory, where outcomes are determined by the participants. Their structure is invisible. Psycho-educational interventions are interventions for which the curriculum has to be more structured and explicit in order for the teacher to be able to manage larger groups. Therapeutic interventions take place in private, closed, settings, usually in smaller groups and individually, while educational interventions take place in the public settings of usually fairly large classrooms.

In the case of this study the setting was school-based, with a pupil population whose anxiety levels were normally distributed, with intervention procedures adapted from clinical/therapeutic settings to an educational setting and delivered jointly by an educational psychologist and a teacher. The study provided some evidence that this can be effective. Further research is needed to establish whether teachers working from a script can successfully deli ver CBT interventions in the classroom.