determine and comparison of test anxiety and locus of control in students payame noor university of daran and chadegan

background: test anxiety is the cause of weakness of the immune system, reducing the academic efficacy, inhibitor of academic achievement and imposes high costs on society. locus of control is not only how to search information in environment but also is  the way of analyzing it in relation to life events. this study is aimed to determine and compare test anxiety and locus of control in payame noor university students of daran and chadegan cities in isfahan province 2012. methods: this study was a cross-sectional research among 288 payame noor university students daran and chadegan that have been selected in random sampling method. data collection was spilberger anxiety and rotter locus of control questionnaire with a demographic section which completed in self report. data were analyzed by spss-18 by descriptive and analytical test such as t-test, anova, mann-whitney u, kruskal-wallis h and chi-square in α= 0.05. findings: mean age was 22.26±4.06, 67.1% women, 28.3% marriage, 70.2% in town area. were 21.7% with internal locus of control, 78.3% external and 3.4% mild anxiety, 30.6% low average, 51.2% above average, 12.8% moderately severe, 1.2% with severe anxiety. there was no significant relationship between level of student’s anxiety and locus of control. the majority of students living in city had external locus of control, unmarried had more anxiety than married, anxiety reduced with increasing age. conclusion: in this survey there were more than half of students who had above average test anxiety, according to the negative effect of anxiety on student’s educational performance implementation preventive programs of anxiety and presentation of psychological services and consultation and also according to no relationship between locus of control and anxiety, propose identify other factors associated with it, and then planned to eliminate them.