In this blog post, we wish to highlight the following article that was recently published in the Journal of Robustness Reports:
Molenaar, D. (2026). Test anxiety can predict exam scores depending on how missing data and influential data points are treated. Journal of Robustness Reports, 1. https://scipost.org/10.21468/JRobustRep.6-rr1.
The target article is:
Theobald, M., Breitwieser, J. & Brod, G. (2022). Test anxiety does not predict exam performance when knowledge is controlled for: Strong evidence against the interference hypothesis of test anxiety. Psychological Science, 33, 2073. doi:10.1177/09567976221119391.
The Molenaar discussion section:
After incorporating students with incomplete data records, test anxiety has a small but statistically significant effect. The removal of an increasing number of influential data points again makes the effect insignificant. A substantive evaluation of the validity of these data should be conducted (ideally by the original authors), since without strong arguments for their removal, these observations appear valid and should be included in the sample.
Author
The JRR Team
References
Molenaar, D. (2026). Test anxiety can predict exam scores depending on how missing data and influential data points are treated. Journal of Robustness Reports, 1. https://scipost.org/10.21468/JRobustRep.6-rr1.
Theobald, M., Breitwieser, J. & Brod, G. (2022). Test anxiety does not predict exam performance when knowledge is controlled for: Strong evidence against the interference hypothesis of test anxiety. Psychological Science, 33, 2073. doi:10.1177/09567976221119391.
Featured image from the Molenaar paper.