Exam anxiety podcasts
Research project to reduce assessment-anxiety
Researchers at the University Psychology Department are seeking student participants for a psychology study that is evaluating relaxation and compassion-focused imagery exercises as possible ways to help students cope with assessment-anxiety and improve their well-being. The study is funded by the University of Derby and is being carried out by Professor James Elander and Dr Kirsten McEwan.
The study is completely online via this site. Here you can listen to the relaxation or compassionate imagery exercises. This study runs over two weeks and we are encouraging participants to practice these exercises for a minimum of 5 minutes per day.
To enable us to evaluate the exercises in a controlled way, people who take part will be randomly allocated to practice either the relaxation or the compassionate imagery. However, both exercises will be available to participants after the study, for people who would like to try the one they were not assigned to for the study. You will be asked to complete some questionnaires online (approx. 10-15 mins) at the beginning and end of the study so we can assess whether practicing the exercises has been beneficial for you or not. We are also interested in your experience of the exercises and so after each week, you will also be asked to fill out a brief questionnaire asking about this (approx 5 mins).
If you are interested in taking part, please email Kirsten McEwan at k.mcewan@derby.ac.uk so we can send you some more information and enable you to take part.
To thank people for their time and effort, we will send a £20 Amazon voucher to everyone who completes the study.
Many thanks
Dr Kirsten McEwan
Research Psychologist
Professor James Elander
Head of Centre for Psychological Research
