Over five weeks, college students who practiced sitting meditation on their own showed significant reductions in test anxiety and overall anxiety, alongside increased mindfulness. Students assigned to music meditation showed no change in test anxiety, though their overall anxiety decreased and mindfulness increased. The findings suggest mindfulness practices, particularly sitting meditation, may help reduce anxiety and test anxiety in college students.
University students who are more neurotic perceive more barriers to meditation, though this relationship plateaus at high neuroticism levels. Students who already meditate report more barriers than non-meditators. Time spent on academic or other work does not relate to barrier perception. The findings suggest that students who might benefit most from meditation—those high in neuroticism—may have the most difficulty maintaining a practice, so clinicians should address these barriers when using meditation as an intervention.
College students who completed an eight-week training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy's (DBT) mindfulness skills showed significant reductions in test anxiety. Test anxiety scores dropped from an average of 56 at the start to 37.56 at the end of the study. The training taught DBT's "What" and "How" mindfulness skills and included weekly home practice. The findings suggest that DBT-based mindfulness training can help students reduce test anxiety and general anxiety while increasing mindfulness, though the lack of a control group means further research is needed.