By Daniel Vecchiolla
“Relax, it’s just a test.” You’ve probably heard this statement at some point in your life. Most likely, it was when you were growing up and attending school. Your buddy, who was a straight-A student, would casually say this to you right before the teacher dropped the exam onto your desk like a ton of bricks. While you sat and contemplated if you even wanted to turn the test over and look at the first question, your buddy was insouciantly breezing through the pages, probably whistling “Dock of the Bay” in his head as he filled in the answers. If anything, the “Relax, it’s just a test” statement put you into even more of a frenzy.
- Preparing For the Promotional Process
- PROMOTIONAL EXAMS FOR COMPANY OFFICERS
- Tactics and the Assessment Center
- The Fire Department Assessment Center Is Here to Stay
At some point in your fire service career, you’ll have to take a test. Many of us started our journey having to take the dreaded firefighter entrance exam. Depending on your municipality, these tests focus on generalized knowledge assessing your competence in mathematical reasoning, mechanical reasoning, reading comprehension, deductive/inductive reasoning, situational judgment, and more. As you progress in your career and start taking certification courses, most ProBoard and International Fire Service Accreditation Congress (IFSAC) certification classes have a skills portion and a required comprehensive test. Even moving past that, some individuals may decide that becoming a company officer and moving up through the ranks is the next step. For the promotional process, fire departments conduct an oral interview; a skills assessment; and, you guessed it, a test. Sooner or later in your career, you’ll be sitting in front of an exam; the only question is, how will you feel about it?
What Is Test Anxiety?
In test anxiety, one experiences a negative response to an exam situation. The negative response can manifest itself both physically (increased heart rate and sweaty palms) and cognitively (imagining failure, feeling unprepared, and lack of confidence).1 Most of us can deal with our body’s physical response; it’s the cognitive aspect that can be debilitating. Having anxious thoughts takes up resources in the limited capacity of our working memory. Anxious thoughts have deleterious effects that can diminish cognitive aptitude. These thoughts typically don’t hinder our ability to solve more straightforward questions, such as recalling facts or definitions, but they decrease our ability to solve more complex and intellectually challenging questions.1
There are more than an estimated 1.1 million career and volunteer firefighters in the United States.2 Consider that, on average, anywhere between 10 to 40 percent of individuals suffer from some degree of test anxiety.3 That would mean that 446,000 firefighters, on the high end, experience negative symptoms associated with taking a test. That’s a considerable number of people in our profession dealing with this issue and possibly not knowing a solution.
Now imagine if people knew practical approaches to diminish stress and even relieve symptoms altogether. Wouldn’t that open up opportunities for firefighters who may have wanted to advance in their career but were too consumed with the unpleasant reaction associated with taking a test? Of course it would, so how do we get there?
How to Relieve Test Anxiety
With any problem, there is not a single solution. Using a multifaceted approach tends to be the most effective way to deal with test anxiety.
Each individual is unique in his own regard and may deal with situations differently. Coping with test anxiety is no different, so experiment with multiple techniques to discover what is most effective for you.
If you do a standard Internet search on ways to relieve test anxiety, you get your typical responses that most of us have already heard of before—get a restful night’s sleep, eat a good breakfast, stay hydrated, be prepared, exercise, and so forth. These tips sound like they are more for a healthy lifestyle than they are for a test. They are standard practices that should already be part of our lives, but if they aren’t, they will have some positive effect on relieving test anxiety. However, if you desire to make some lasting changes, there are two areas that have been shown to generate quality improvement in test anxiety and are simple to implement.
Write Out Your Worries
One area that researchers have focused on is the simple act of writing out your worries or discomforts before you take your test. This concept has spanned across several other anxiety-related disorders and has been seen to help relieve anxious thoughts in general. The concept works by writing out any negative thoughts you have associated with your feelings, discomforts, and worries about taking the test. Once you have written your negative thoughts down, you can reevaluate them and decide whether your thoughts are rational or emotional. “Writing may alleviate the burden that worries place on working memory by affording people an opportunity to reevaluate the stressful experience in a manner that reduces the necessity to worry altogether.”4 You can simply do this exercise 10-20 minutes before your exam. While doing expressive writing, researchers found that after writing down your negative thoughts, crumpling up and throwing the paper away seemed to relieve tension in students and created a more stress-free atmosphere.1 That simple act is like throwing away your negative thoughts in the trash after writing them down, opening up space for you to focus on the test.
Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction
Another approach to combating test anxiety is the use of inquiry-based stress reduction (IBSR). It’s very similar to just writing out your thoughts, but it involves a structured approach and exploration. The IBSR method developed a specific set of questions for the individual to identify and explore stressful cognitions.5 Below is the list of questions:
Investigate each of your statements, using the following questions:
Q1: Is this thought true? Yes or no?
Q2: Can you absolutely know that this thought is true? Yes or no?
Q3: How do you react; what happens when you have this thought? Open-ended answer.
- Does that thought bring peace or stress to your life? Open-ended answer.
- What images do you see, past or future, as you think this thought? Open-ended answer.
- What physical sensations arise having these thoughts and seeing these pictures? Open-ended answer.
- What emotions arise when you have that thought? Open-ended answer.
- Do any obsessions or addictions begin to appear when you have this thought (e.g., alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, and television)? Open-ended answer.
- How do you treat others when you have this thought? Open-ended answer.
- How do you treat yourself when you have this thought? Open-ended answer.
Q4: Who would you be without the thought? Open-ended answer.
Turn the thought around.
Example: My lecturer did not prepare me well enough for the exam.
Possible turnarounds:
- To yourself. Example: I did not prepare myself well enough for the exam.
- To the other. Example: I did not prepare my lecturer well enough for the exam.
- To the opposite. Example: My lecturer did prepare me well enough for the exam.
Now, find at least three specific, genuine examples of how each turnaround is true for you in the situation. Implementing this approach works by first answering two questions: “Is this thought true?” and “Can you absolutely know that this thought is true?” After answering those questions, the following questions on the list guide you to explore a mental picture of the stressful thoughts, emotions, or bodily sensations you are experiencing with those thoughts and help you reflect on the causes, benefits, and functionality of those thoughts.
The final question, “Who would you be without this thought?” enables the individual to perceive reality without the distortions caused by the stressful cognitions and to experience how the individual would feel without them.6 The last part asks the individual to explore the opposite thought that person is having by turning those beliefs around. For example, turn “I did not prepare well enough for this exam” around to “I did prepare well enough for this exam.” Once you have turned your thought around, you are instructed to find examples of why the turnaround is accurate in that situation.
You might wonder, What do all these mind games actually do? The researchers concluded that using the IBSR method increased an individual’s self-efficacy and decreased test anxiety. In a nutshell, it allows the individual to process his thoughts and feelings rationally and helps guide him to change his thoughts positively by confirming those positive thoughts with genuine examples. You are changing the belief in your capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments, one of the most significant actions an individual can take to enable himself to be successful.
Now You’re Ready
At some point in our careers, we all have felt some apprehension about moving forward, weighing out our options on what would be the best course of action to take. The next time you sit in front of an exam, will it be different? There are no guarantees that you will not experience some form of stress. However, if you do experience test anxiety even when you have a solid understanding of the material and have thoroughly prepared, you now have substantiated techniques that will aid you in relieving your stress and changing your thought process. Allow yourself the time before the test to write out your thoughts. You can then start to analyze what you’re thinking, explore opposite ideas, and confirm the rationality of those ideas with genuine examples. Then throw that sheet away. Now, when the proctor comes around and drops the test on your desk, this time, you’ll be the one whistling “Dock of the Bay.”
Endnotes
1. J.H. Doherty and M.P. Wenderoth, “Implementing an Expressive Writing Intervention for Test Anxiety in a Large College Course,” Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, vol. 18, no. 2, 2017.
2. B. Evarts and G. P. Stein, “US Fire Department Profile 2019,” NFPA, 2020.
3. C. L. Thomas, J. C. Cassady and W. H. Finch, “Identifying Severity Standards on the Cognitive Test Anxiety Scale: Cut Score Determination Using Latent Class and Cluster Analysis,” Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 492-508, 2018.
4. G. Ramirez and S. L. Beilock, “Writing About Testing Worries Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom,” Science, vol. 331, pp. 211-213, 2011.
5. A. Krispenz, C. Gort, L. Schültke and O. Dickhauser, “How to Reduce Test Anxiety and Academic Procrastination Through Inquiry of Cognitive Appraisals: A Pilot Study Investigating the Role of Academic Self-Efficacy,” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, 2019.
6. “Solving Procrastination,” [Online]. Available: https://solvingprocrastination.com/study-inquiry-based-stress-reduction. [Accessed 29 July 2021.]
DANIEL VECCHIOLLA is a battalion chief and Virginia-certified fire investigator for Navy Region Mid-Atlantic Fire & Emergency Services. He began his fire service career with the Chesapeake (VA) Fire Department and transitioned into the Department of Defense six years ago. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in public administration from Old Dominion University. He is working on his Ph.D. in organizational management-leadership at Liberty University. He received his Fire Officer designation through the Center for Public and Safety Excellence, for which he serves as a peer reviewer. He also has his Fire Investigation Technician designation through the International Association of Arson Investigators.
