Effects of yogic intervention on academic anxiety among school going students

Background: An alarming number of school going students suffer from several emotional and behavioral problems. Academic Anxiety is one among them. It is a key point of focus for psychologists, educationists, parents, and teachers. On the other hand, interdisciplinary researches with special reference to yoga and psychology are growing rapidly in this era of applied science. Aims: The current study aimed at exploring the effect of Yogic Intervention on the academic anxiety level of school going students. Methods: Researcher has taken purposive sampling method for the current research. Present study was carried out by taking a total of 40, grade VIII subjects as sample of Gayatri Vidyapeeth, Haridwar City. Yogic intervention was given to each and every subject of the group for a period of 90 days regularly. In this research, pre-post single-group design has been applied. Participants were given a questionnaire named as "Academic Anxiety Scale for Children” by A.K. Singh and Alpana Sen Gupta (2005) for measurement. Statistical Analysis Used: Wilcoxon sign rank test, median, effect size and reduction percentages have been used for comparing pre and post scores and computing the magnitude of the effect of intervention. Results: A Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test revealed a statistically significant reduction in the level of academic anxiety of the participants in the yogic interventional program, z = -5.524, p<0.001(sig.2-tailed). The median score on academic anxiety decreased from 15 pre-intervention to 8 post-intervention. The pre test percentage was 75.75% and post test percentage was40.13%, reduction percentage of academic anxiety level was 35.62%, which indicates large effect of the intervention on academic anxiety. Conclusions: The findings revealed that the Yogic Intervention is highly effective in reducing the academic anxiety level in school going student participants, which was significant at 0.01 level of significance.