ANXIETY TOWARDS MATHEMATICS IN THE STUDENTS OF THE CONALEP CAMPUS VERACRUZ-1: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE MORNING AND AFTERNOON SHIFTS IN VERACRUZ, MÉXICO

Resumen

The present study had as aim to measure the anxiety level towards mathematics in the students of the College of Technical Professional Study in the State of Veracruz High School (CONALEP for its acronym in Spanish) on Veracruz I campus in the morning and afternoon shifts. For this purpose, the Muñoz and Mato-Vázquez (2007) scale was used; it is formed by 25 items grouped in five dimensions: anxiety towards evaluation, temporality, understanding of mathematical problems, number and mathematical operations and real life situations. The study was also based on the recent empirical findings of García-Santillán, Escalera and Venegas (2013, 2014, 2015). It was approached from a non-experimental transversal-cut quantitative paradigm using the exploratory factor analysis with component extraction as the technique for data measurement (KMO, X², α= 0.05). In both cases the value of X² showed enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis (H_o). The internal consistency of the test showed, for the gathered data of the morning shift students α= 0.849 (grouped) and 0.793 individually, and for the afternoon shift α= 0.849 (grouped) and 0.793 individually, which are very acceptable in theoretical terms (Hair, Yerson, Tatham and Black, 1999).