A Meta-Analysis of Test-Retest Reliability in Language Anxiety Research: Is Language Anxiety Stable or Variable?

Researchers have agreed that language anxiety is situation-specific; however, whether existing instruments measure stable or transient components of this anxiety remains controversial. Therefore, this study examined language anxiety's trait stability and state variability. The results from synthesizing 21 test-retest correlations based on existing scales showed a large effect (r = .82). Meta-regression and subgroup analyses revealed that the aggregated correlation varied with target languages, but not with age, measuring scales, or retest intervals. The overall results provide evidence that situation-specific language anxiety, as measured by existing scales, is as stable as broad personality traits are, but it is not a personality trait. This finding suggests a need to develop anxiety instruments for transient state language anxiety that will complement rather than replace existing scales that are capable of measuring the temporal stability of language anxiety. This finding also provides implications for language research and practice with regard to anxiety, and for research on other individual-difference variables and their measurement.