Education is the activity that aids new generations obtain the necessary information, ability, attitude and understanding and develop their character while preparing them for communal life. Teaching, on the other hand, is the process in which the individual develops talents in proportion to their capacity. The most important factor in education and teaching activities is the teacher. A teacher, in the most general terms, is a person working in educational institutes who enables students to reach cognitive, sensory and behavioural aim and gains within the range determined by the educational system (Gundogdu, Silman, 2007: 259). In our day a modern teacher surpasses this definition as well. The teacher has gone beyond just teaching class, giving lectures, making exams and giving grades; the teacher also takes on the roles of organizing, managing, counselling, observing and evaluating. The teacher also has an important role in influencing the society, creating a sound foundation towards the future of society and ensuring the continuation of such actions.

Understanding Anxiety and Phobia

An extreme fear of examination is both an Anxiety and Phobia because literature shows both terms to express students’ extreme fear of examination (Maryam, Dahar, & Yousuf, 2015). Basically, test anxiety is the personality disposition that comes from cognitive and personality characteristics of the students Akbari, Bakht, Khaledi, Bajvar, &Hovayzaee, (2012). The cognitive element of test anxiety is associated with mental and thinking process of students (i.e., consequences of anxiety such as, irrational and intrusive thought before and during examination). While different variables related to personality traits also predict test anxiety among students Furthermore, it is admitted fact that environment and situational variables also influence human feelings and thinking. It also plays a vital role in shaping person ‘s attitude towards other and also about him/herself. Moreover, a person develops the complex feelings of inner-self by interacting with others (i.e., parents, siblings, teachers, and with peer group). From the above perspective of the development of self, person’s self-concept refers to one’s perception about him/herself (O’Donnell, Reeve, & Smith, 2007).

Fear on Examination

In the educational process, although the role of examination is of great importance, some students suffer from fear of examination. More than 50 percent of students suffer from examination phobia. It does not matter whether the student is intelligent or not. They all are worried about forgetting while appearing in an examination. The author further stated that examination phobia is a major problem for a large number of students. For them examination is something which is almost inevitable. (Davis, 2016).

Social influence

Social influence is a common feature of everyday life. Social influence occurs when an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by other people. It is a fundamental part of relations both within group and between groups. Social influence takes many different forms, and can be seen in processes of conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, minority influence, and social change, to name but a few topics into which social influence research extends its reach.

Social Influence on Exam Phobia

Home is a unit of the society. So, the people in the society keenly watch the students’ academic life, their character, their social participation and so on. The students also like to earn the respect of the community where they live in. They give much importance to their self-esteem. They expect to be in the good book of the known people in the society. Hence, they are very careful in keeping their personal and academic life in a better way. If they fail to expose better performance in their examination they will have to answer to their fellow mates in the society. Hence, they are worried about their public examination. Examination anxiety is a major factor contributing to a variety of negative outcomes including psychological distress, academic underachievement, academic failure, and insecurity (Hembree, 1988).

Students, due to the fear examination or failure in the examination or low performance in the examination, will not, hesitate to participate in any functions or events happening at home or in the society or any celebrations in the village temple or church or masque. They do so because they are ashamed of themselves to face the public. At the same time, students of the same village or town will hesitate to mingle with high scorers of students studying in the same school. It is due to the people in the society compare the low scorers with the high scorers; ridicule at the low scorers; criticise them in the public; and try to advocate them in front of others. The students who scored low marks or failed in the examinations do not like to hear this kind of remarks or comments from the society. Research has documented negative social influences from classmates such as bullying, victimisation, criticism, argument or fights, and disrespect within the school environment (Hein, Koka and Hagger, 2015). The findings of these previous studies about negative social influence from classmates, and explain that classmates may exert negative social influences in the form of punishment to children who do not perform well in school (Horn and Hasbrook, 1986).

Students in large number, who expect or experience shame, discouragement, stress and anxiety from the public due to the failures in their examinations make an attempt to commit suicide or commit suicide. They feel that they have lost everything in life. They do not have good counselling either at home, school or in the society. They do not have any option other than self-molestation. They lose their emotional stability and courage and run away from their village or do not have valour to face hardships from home or society. Some students even become dropout due to the fear of examinations. They take decision in their mind that they are incapable for studying. They do not want to hear anyone’s criticism or advice.

Social Issues on students’ Academic life

Social problems in the world impact the operation and effectiveness of public education. In fact, a major portion of the school’s work devotes itself to responding, directly or indirectly, to students whose lives are challenged by social ills, such as poverty or school violence, homelessness, teen parenting, substance abuse, child abuse, and youth suicide, complicate students’ efforts to learn. Other social problems, such as vandalism, violence, and the dropout rate, are exacerbated when students feel alienated from the school structure. Due to anyone of these social issues, students would not study properly and prepare for their examination. Followed by this, they have exam phobia and so they fail to appear for the examinations. Family is also a socialised institution. It’s environment also goes against the favour of the students due to depression, poverty or poor economic status, health issues and so on.

Social Influence from Classmates

Similar to teachers, the findings of social influences from classmates were quite robust. Positive reinforcement and punishment respectively formed positive and negative relationships with all the commitment outcomes. Perhaps classmates are significant social agents of children’s commitment as compared to the role of other social agents such as teachers, (Ntoumanis and Vazou, 2005 and Duda, 2006).

In comparison to classmates, teammates or peers are more likely to train and compete with and be compared against each other (Penney and Jess, 2004). Children might be more responsive to the positive reinforcement and punishment from their peers in a competitive environment (Trudeau and Shephard, 2008).

Social influence from parents

Among the other social agents investigated in this study, the findings of social influences from parents are mixed. Although the literature has largely supported the view that positive social influences from parents is an important factor of children commitment to school and physical activity (McDavid, Cox, Amorose, 2012),

Parents’ positive reinforcements are positive predictors of children’s competence and effort respectively. Positive reinforcement from parents do not form any significant relationship with all commitment outcomes of children in LE. Therefore, the   role of positive reinforcement from parents has positive social influence from parents impaired or became non-significant.

Classroom Climate; Social and Cultural Dimensions of Learning

Classroom climate refers to “the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical environment in which learning takes place”. Classroom climate is determined by a number of factors, including instructor-student interactions, student-student interactions, course demographics, social content in the course (e.g., ethical issues, politics), and the tone the instructor sets for the course. It is important to note that not all students will experience the climate in the same way.

Need and significance

The students cannot tolerate the people in the society mock or ridicule at them if they score low marks. People in the society usually, are very curious to know about the maximum scores of marks of every student and compare one with the other. Students know this well and so; they will not be seen in their eyes and they always try to escape from them. If they score good marks alone, they will appear in front of them the people belonging to their society. Parents, teachers and peers to students are found to be the main sources of social influence on students towards their academic development. Some students become so frightened that they cannot perform well in the examination, even they forget the answers of the questions as they enter in the examination hall (Stellar, 2009). Almost all the students worry about forgetting in an exam, not being able to recall essential information during solving paper. And these fears become obstacles in their performance, especially during exam days. Teachers should help the students find out their own areas of deficiencies. Self-assessment helps to locate the area which needs improvement. During exam the students should eat properly and take sound sleeps at night.

Exam phobia

Exam Phobia refers to the subjective experience of intense physiological, cognitive and or behavioral symptoms of phobia before or during test-taking situations that interferes with test performance. Intelligent and hardworking students have fear, anger and frustration in their hearts against the teachers having shallow knowledge and cheater students who had never bothered their studies and those who did not attend the classes, but by cheating and influencing on so called educationist, will get better marks than them (Chennai & Ram, 2002).

Causes for Exam Phobia

Examination phobia is created lot of pressure on students’ academic performance. Its excess pressure from the parent’s group, unprepared for the examination. Teacher’s pressure, Tough Competition.

Fear of Board Exam

Inadequate preparations one of the reasons of fear board exam. Irrational and fallacious believes. Some of the student’s minds are full of all strains of irrational and fallacious believes. Pressure contributes lots of fear into the student’s heart doing an examination. It could be pressure from parents, teachers, relatives. The fear of failing. Another reason why students fear exams is the fear of failing.

Society role for student’s exam

Helping all students feel like a part of the school and educational community. Society can praise any part of the learning process, academic, as well as encourage the child to give self-praise. Encouraging students to ask questions when they don’t understand something or need further clarification. Many students fear appearing in front of their classmates and relatives. Society can also help students develop successful test-taking strategies, an area where bright students of all cultural backgrounds can have difficulty to the detriment of their grades and self-esteem.

Objectives of the study

1. To find out the significant difference in the social influence of Plus two Students with regard to the back ground variables such as gender, locality, and type of school, parental educational status.
2. To find out the relationship between the Social Influence and Exam Phobia of Plus Two Students.

Hypotheses

1. There is a significant influence between the Social Influence and gender with regard to Exam Phobia.
2. There is a significant influence between the Social Influence and locality with regard to Exam Phobia.
3. There is a significant influence between the Social Influence and Type of School with regard to Exam Phobia.
4. There is a significant influence between the Social Influence and Parental Educational Status with regard to Exam Phobia.
5. There is significant relationship between the Social Influence and Exam phobia of Plus Two Stude

Method

The selection of method is based on the nature of the problem and the kind of data necessary for its solution. The research design shows the research method to be used, how data will be collected and analyses and the details about the selection of particular method (Burnett, 2009). After analysing the characteristics of the study, the investigators adopted the survey method of research in the present study. The survey method gathered data from a relatively large number of cases at a particular time. It is concerned with the generalized statistics of the whole population or sample. In the present study, survey method has been used to collect data from the Kanyakumari district.

Population

The population of the present investigation comprises of the plus two students in Kanyakumari district. According to the present study, the size of the population comprised under the twelve higher secondary Schools in Kanyakumari Districts in the Academic year 2020 -2021.

Sample

A sample is a part of a large population which is actually observed .The performance of a sample is used to make an inference about the performance of the larger group (Gay & Airasian, 2008)

The investigators have employed Simple Random Sampling technique for selecting the sample. The investigator randomly selected 12 higher secondary Schools in Kanyakumari district. From each school’s 12^th Standard students both boys and girls were taken as sample representing the population.

Sample distribution was done on the basis of gender, locality, Type of school and parental educational qualification. The Sample consists of 1000 students. The sample size for this study consists of 381Males and 619 Females Plus Two Students which include of 12 higher secondary schools from Kanyakumari District.

Tools Used

The investigator used the following Self Constructed tools for the study.

1. Bella -Rex Scale on Social Influence on Exam Phobia (2021)
2. Bella -Rex Scale on Exam Phobia of Plus Two students. (2021)

Research Tools used

A tool is a data gathering device or procedure used for research investigation (Best & Kahn, 2005). Tools are used to collect relevant information of a research problem. They can be used for gathering both quantitative and qualitative data.

Statistical Techniques Used                                           

In this study, the following statistical techniques were used. They are Mean, Standard, Deviation, T-Score-Test, ANOVA, Pearson Product Moment Correlation.

Different levels of Social Influence on the exam phobia

The below table describes the different levels of Social Influence on exam phobia of Plus two students. It reveals that in the total (1000) sample 148 (14.8%) of Plus two students has low level of Social Influence 648 (64.8%) of Plus two students has medium level of Social Influence and remaining 204 (20.4%) of Plus two students has high level of Social Influence on the exam phobia.

Table 1. Percentages distribution of different levels of social influence

The table shows that the Percentage level of Social Influence Exam phobia is average.

Analysis of social Influence on the exam phobia of plus two students

Ho 1 : There is a significant influence between the Social Influence and gender with regard to Exam Phobia.

Table 2. Social influence on exam phobia of plus two students with regard to gender

*Sig at 0.01 level

It is inferred from the above table shows that the calculated ‘t’ value (3.608) is higher than the table ‘t’ value at 1% level of significant. This is evident from the p-value 0.00(<0.05). So, the hypothesis is accepted and it is found that there is significant difference in the social influence on exam phobia of plus two students with regard to Gender.

Ho 2 : There is a significant influence between the Social Influence and locality with regard to Exam Phobia.

Table 3. Social influence on the locality

*Sig at 0.01 level

It is inferred from the above table shows that the calculated ‘t’ value (13.617) is higher than the table ‘t’ value at 1% level of significant. This is evident from the p-value of 0.000(<0.05). So, the hypothesis is accepted and it is found that there is significant difference in the social influence on exam phobia of plus two students with regard to locality.

Ho 3 : There is a significant influence between the social influence and Type of School with regard to Exam Phobia.

Table 4. Social influence on the type of school

*Sig at 0.01 level

It is inferred from the above table shows that the calculated ‘t’ value (20.575) is higher than the table ‘t’ value at 1% level of significant. This is evident from the p-value of 0.00(<0.05). So, the hypothesis is accepted and it is found that there is significant difference in the social influence on exam phobia of plus two students with regard to type of school.

Social influence on the Exam Phobia of Plus Two Students based on Parental Educational Status.

Ho 4 : There is a significant influence between the Social influence and Parental Educational qualification with regard to Exam Phobia.

Table 5. Social influence on parental educational qualification

*Not significant at 0.05level

It is inferred from the above table 4.18 that the calculated ‘F’ value (0.876) is lower than the table ‘F’ value at 0.05% level of significant. This is evident from the p-value of 0.052(>0.05). So, the hypotheses is rejected, and it is found that there is no significant difference in the social influence on exam phobia of plus two students with regard to parental educational qualification.

Ho 5 : There is a significant relationship between the social influence Influence and Exam phobia of Plus Two Students.

Table 6. Correlation between the social influence and exam phobia of plus two students

Sig.at 0.01 level

A correlation was run to determine the relationship between Social Influence and Exam Phobia was statistically Significant, r (0.563), N=1000, p = 0.000(p<0.01).

There is significant relationship between the social influence and exam phobia of plus two students.

Findings of the Study

The major findings of the study are

1. The percentage level of Social Influence on Exam Phobia is average.
2. There is significant association of Social Influence with the Exam Phobia of plus two students with regard to gender.
3. There is significant association of Social Influence with the Exam Phobia of plus two students with regard to Locality.
4. There is significant association of Social Influence with the Exam Phobia of plus two students with regard to Types of school.
5. There is no significant association Social Influence with the Exam Phobia of plus two students with regard to Parental educational qualification.
6. The correlation between Social Influence and Exam Phobia, was statistically significant.

Recommendations

The findings of the study showed the Social Influence of plus two students and it would help to hold the strengthen for the student’s life. Hence the researcher wishes to recommend.

For all students

They should learn their day-to-day lesson and for no reason, they should have postponed to the other day. They must develop confidence that they can do well in any sort of exams or tests. They must know one thing that it is not the matter of scoring low marks but mastering the subjects. They should hone presentation skill in a written form. They should learn to write with in the stipulated time frame so that they should involve in practice in writing test even at home. At the time of the examination when they do not find expected questions don’t lose the confidence. Moreover, they should not learn in such a way that the particular questions are expected ones. They should not concentrate on external disturbances by which they may lose their time correct numbering of question is very essential. They must be equipped with enough and more writing materials when they entire their exam halls. Reading the whole questions before beginning to write the examination must be avoided because, if anyone who does not know few answers in the question paper will be tensed and worried so that they will not be able to write properly even then if they know answers for the questions. Equal amount of time should be given to write the questions according to the marks and the words allotted to them. It is left to their option they can begin and end their examination with prayers.

To the society

The people in the society should encourage to the students even though they score low marks. They should not compare the children who secure low marks with their own children. They should not tell in front of the students that they are good for nothing. They can support and cooperative the students. They can show them good role models or can be good examples. They can even teach them how to come out successfully and colourfully in their future life. Society can afford financial assistants to the students who are economically deprived.

For all parents

Parents should accept their children. They should never and ever compare their children with other students or other children with regard to learning or scoring of marks. Parents should keep away all the familial affairs happening in between them. Parents should avoid discouraging words about their children. They should not develop negative thoughts in the mind of the children. They should nurture their children by nourishing nutritious food. Parents should teach their children good habits and moral stories. There should be proper communication among parents and their children with regard to relevant matters. Parents should be friendly with their children. They should not curse their children. They should not chide their children for obtaining low marks any subjects.

To all teachers

Teachers should have subject knowledge. They should not talk ill of a ward with other teachers. They should help the low scorers by all means in making them score high marks. They should teach their children by using relevant Instructional Aids for making complex concept an easy one. They should not hurt the feeling of their wards either in front of opposite gender or other students. They should correct their wards if they commit mistakes and shape their character in a good way. They should remove from their mind the fear of examination. They should make their wards prepare the examination as if a king sending the soldiers to the battle field. They should encourage every student and feed confidence in their minds. They should not show partiality among the students.

Conclusion

The study paves way to the society and students to change their activities according to their children’s exam. Parents, teachers and students with society   may try to improve their role and modify according to the need of the hour. This study mainly helps to the society   and teachers and society to lead their children’s to maintaining good habits and physical and cognitive and good learning environment in order to avoid exam phobia. This study realises to the societies taking efforts to their student’s when they faced their board exams   and role of social influence on the exam phobia of plus two students. This study would encourage to the student’s appreciation of improving academic performance and overcome to their exam phobia. Peer pressure can be harmful and compelling. They feel that they have lost everything in life. They do not have good counselling either at home, school or in the society. Parents, teachers and peers to students are found to be the main sources of social influence on students towards their academic development.