Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of a counseling
program in reducing the level of test anxiety among frst year university Bahrain
students. The sample consisted of 30 male and female students that was divided into
two equal groups: experimental group (15 students) and control group (15 students).
The study used the Test Anxiety Scale that was developed by the researchers and
a pilot study was conducted to ensure its validity and reliability. The researchers
developed and implemented a counseling program on the experimental group. The
study revealed that there were signifcant differences in the mean rank scores between
the pre- test and the post-test in favor of the experimental group, and that there were
also signifcant differences in the mean rank scores between the pre-test and post- test
for the experimental group, in favor of the post-test, while there were no signifcant
differences for the control group, hence, indicating the effectiveness of the counseling
program. Finally, there were no signifcant differences in the mean rank scores
between the post-test and follow-up test for the experimental group, confrming the
continued effectiveness of the counseling program.