Exploring the Pattern of Cognitive Test Anxiety among PG Students: A Cluster Analysis

This study explored cognitive test anxiety (CTA) among postgraduate students by grouping them based on gender, academic stream, and residence to see which factors were most important in different cluster sizes. Descriptive survey design used in this study and data were chosen with the ‘Cognitive Test Anxiety Scale’ (CTAS) by Jerrell Cassady and Ronald Johnson (2002), which includes 27 items on a four-point Likert scale. The analysis focused on how students were grouped and which predictors mattered most in each cluster solution. Results explored that gender, academic stream, and residence were consistently important in forming clusters. In case of smaller clusters, these demographic factors were stronger predictors, while ‘cognitive test anxiety’ had less influence at first. As the number of ‘clusters’ increased, CTA became more important and the main predictor in the ten-cluster solution. The study concludes that ‘demographic’ factors strongly affect how postgraduate students are grouped, and cognitive test anxiety becomes more important when looking at more detailed cluster structures