Abstract

Objectives: The current research was conducted to compare the effectiveness of Lazarus Multimodal Therapy, Ellis Rational Emotive Therapy, relaxation, and placebo on decreasing students’ test anxiety

. Method: 92 high school students suffering from test anxiety were sele-cted as the subjects of the study.They were clients of counseling centers affiliated to Ministry of Education and National Youth Center in Tehran. Using simple random method, the sub-jects were assigned to five treatment groups: Lazarus Multimodal Therapy (n=20), Ellis Rational-Emotive (n=18), relaxation (n=19), placebo (n=17), and control group (n=17). After ten treatment session (two 50 minutes weekly sessions) for each group, the students’ test anxiety was assessed once again. The data was analyzed by using multigroup pre-post test experimental design and analysis of variance.�

Findings: The findings revealed that the four therapeutic methods were more effective in reducing anxiety than the control group. There was no significant difference between Lazarus Multimodal Therapy and Ellis Rational Emo-tional Therapy. Lazarus Multimodal Therapy was significantly more effective in reducing anxiety than relaxation, placebo, and control groups. There was no significant difference between relaxation therapy and placebo method in reduction of anxiety.

Results: Four therapeutic methods in this research significantly were more effective than control group.