In most modern societies, nearly every realm of life involves some form of
evaluation of our knowledge, abilities and skills. Given the potentially
significant consequences of exams, it is not surprising that they are often
very stressful. This study aimed to determine the existence and nature of the
relationships between level of test anxiety, coping strategies, and achieved
success on a mid-term test. As well as examining the direct relations between
the given variables, our primary interest was to investigate the potential
mediating role of coping mechanisms between the input and output variables of
the examined stressful transaction. The study was conducted on a sample of
263 students from the Psychology and German Studies Departments of the
Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad. According to our
results, only emotion-focused coping mechanisms were statistically
significant mediators in the relationship between level of test anxiety and
mid-term test achievement. The results indicate that students with high test
anxiety who employ predominantly emotion-focused coping strategies score
lower on a pre-exam knowledge test.