Moderating effects of coping on the relationship between test anxiety and negative mood

We explored the moderating effect of exam-related coping strategies on the relationships between test anxiety, negative mood and salivary cortisol. Fifty undergraduate students participated, with 29 in the academic examination group and 21 in the comparison group. Across groups, worry was associated with higher levels of negative mood before, during and after the exam or homework period. However, avoidance coping moderated this effect such that there was a strong positive relationship between worry and negative mood when avoidance coping was low, but not when avoidance coping has high. Negative mood on the day of the study correlated positively with the number of illness symptoms reported 3 days later. Our results suggest that coping strategies used to deal with academic examination stress dynamically moderate the effects of test anxiety on negative mood. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.