Heightened anxieties in secondary school students with reading difficulties

Purpose: Reading difficulties in primary school students have been linked to elevated anxiety, yet very few studies have examined this relationship in secondary school students who have different priorities and experience distinct challenges. Method: In this study, data from 95 secondary school students (Mage=14.58, SD=1.52; Female=49, Male=46) was used to investigate whether secondary students with poor reading report higher levels of generalized, social, and reading-related anxiety than their peers; whether anxiety symptoms are associated with word reading accuracy, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension; whether these associations are moderated by grade or gender; and whether comorbid attention or language difficulties further contribute to elevated anxiety in poor readers. Results: Simple Binomial Tests revealed that a significantly larger proportion of secondary students with poor reading have elevated anxiety scores compared to the proportion expected for a typical population (under 16%). Spearman’s rank-order correlations showed weak associations between reading measures and generalised or social anxiety, but moderate to strong associations between reading-specific anxiety (general and social) and all reading measures. Grade and gender did not moderate these relationships. Finally, Fisher’s tests provided no evidence that comorbid attention or language difficulties were linked to higher anxiety symptoms among poor secondary school readers.Conclusions: The findings of study this provide evidence for a moderate to strong association between reading ability and reading anxiety and motivate further investigations into the causal mechanisms that may create and then maintain links between reading and wellbeing in secondary school students.