AcAdeMiC: Acting With Acceptance, Mindfulness and Compassion to Overcome Test/Exam Anxiety
Condition: Adolescents; Test Anxiety
MeSH terms: Anxiety Disorders
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Test Anxiety is a highly prevalent and impairing condition in adolescents (i.e., 9th to 12th
      grade students), significantly impacting on their mental health and well-being. Among
      Portuguese university students, test anxiety is the primary reason for seeking specialized
      psychological support, suggesting the importance of early intervention.

      Test anxiety associates to low self-compassion, acceptance and mindfulness, which have been
      increasingly acknowledged in literature as important processes to cultivate towards human
      experience and suffering, within intervention programs, particularly in adolescence, and in
      anxiety and fear of failure in academic settings.

      These processes are covered and enhanced within comprehensive models and evidence-based
      therapies that adopt an integrative, contextual and biopsychosocial approach, such as
      Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), as
      well as an evolutionary approach, such as Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). These approaches
      focus on receiving internal events (e.g., thoughts, emotions, memories) in an accepting and
      compassionate way, as part of human experience, without changing them, while developing a
      sense of vitality, well-being and commitment to valued ends in life, instead of focusing
      solely or mainly on symptom reduction (although it is usually a consequent outcome).

      However, there are no empirically validated therapeutic programs for adolescents with test
      anxiety promoting these processes combined.

      ICT-based interventions are accessible, convenient, cost-effective and have been proved
      effective in reducing anxiety disorders' symptomatology. Even though there are some
      empirically validated online interventions for test anxiety in adolescents, having shown
      promising results, these were mainly self-help/module-based programs, without a clinician
      facilitating the intervention.

      This project aims to develop and implement a 12-week ICT-based targeted, facilitated and
      manualized individual intervention for adolescent students, developing compassion, acceptance
      and mindfulness, in order to help improve test anxiety's regulation (and consequently symptom
      reduction), as well as increase general and school-related well-being, while promoting valued
      life action.
    

Detailed description: 
      All ethical and deontological requirements are guarenteed in this study.

      A sample of adolescent students (from 9th to 12th grade) is being online-recruited, through
      social media and contacts with Executive Boards of Portuguese secondary schools, private
      practices and study centers, advertising the study.

      Parents/legal guardians are encouraged to contact the team. From this approach, parents/legal
      guardians and respective adolescents who demonstrate interest are explained the aims and
      procedures of the study and asked to sign a written consent form.

      Adolescents are then assessed for eligibility through a test anxiety self-report measure and
      a clinical interview.

      Eligible participants will be randomly assigned to either an experimental group, who will
      reveive the intervention (facilitated by licenced psychotherapists with training in
      contextual therapies and are familiar with the intervention protocol), or a waiting-list
      control group, who will have access to the intervention after the six-month follow-up
      assessment.

      Both groups will complete a protocol with self-report measures, assessing psychopathology
      indicators, emotion regulation processes, and general and school-related well-being, in four
      different moments: at baseline (M0), immediatly after the intervention (M1), three months
      (M2) and six months (M3) after the intervention.
    

Intervention name(s): Intervention program for test anxiety
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): 12-week ICT-based manualized, targeted and facilitated individual intervention for adolescent students, that aims to promote compassion, acceptance and mindfulness, in order to help improve test anxiety's regulation (and consequently symptom reduction), as well as increase general and school-related well-being, while promoting valued life action.
Other intervention name(s): AcAdeMiC: Acting With Acceptance, Mindfulness and Compassion to Overcome Test/Exam Anxiety
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: test anxiety; adolescents; acceptance; mindfulness; compassion