Reduction of exam anxiety in first-year university students using an intervention based on solution-focused brief therapy

A randomized controlled trial employing a pre-test–posttest design was carried out to evaluate the impact of a four-session group intervention, grounded in solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), on alleviating exam anxiety among first-year psychology students in Poland. The study involved 18 university students, aged between 19 and 21 years (M = 19.22, SD = 0.55). Exam anxiety levels were measured both before and after the intervention, using a modified Polish version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale [FCV-19S]. In the experimental group, emotional states (using the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience [SPANE]) and perceived stress (using a single-item Visual Analogue Scale [VAS] ) were assessed before and after each session.
Data format: EXCEL file.
The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Opole University and was preregistered on the Open Science Framework (OSF) prior to data collection. The preregistration is available at: https://osf.io/qtc9m/.