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Based on a cognitive--motivational modeling of construct relations, this study analyzed the role of prior statistics experiences within a framework of domain-specific self-concept and value variables to predict education science students' statistics anxiety. Data were analyzed from two independent samples comprising 113 and 87 participants--using the passing of a statistics exam as the experience measure in each case. In both samples, the results of three-way analyses of variance demonstrated students' statistics anxiety to be substantially explained by their negative utility value and self-concept but only to a minor extent by their prior statistics experiences. Students' statistics anxiety appeared to be dependent on value and self-concept scores across all experience levels. Though producing somewhat varying effect patterns, the findings from both samples led to similar effects, indicating the crucial role of self-belief variables. Results are discussed in terms of conceptual, methodological, and instructional implications.

Learners' academic self-concepts and attributions have been widely evidenced to substantially regulate their educational development. Developmentally, they will not only operate in a mutually reinforcing manner. Rather, self-concepts will directly affect learners' outcome attributions in a particular academic setting. Current research in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context has increasingly analyzed learners' attributions and self-concepts on a task-specific construct level. Nevertheless, there still exist certain research gaps in the field, particularly concerning learners' grammar self-concept and attributions. Therefore, the present study aimed at analyzing longitudinal relations of prior performance and self-concept with subsequent attributions of grammar success and failure in a sample of preadolescent EFL learners. Findings demonstrated that attributional patterns mostly but not entirely depended on learners' grammar self-concept. Poor performing learners holding a low self-concept displayed a maladaptive attribution pattern for explaining both grammar success and failure. Though not with respect to all causal factors, these findings largely confirm the crucial role of task-specific self-concept in longitudinally explaining related control beliefs in the EFL context.

Current instruments for assessing university students' statistics anxiety prevailingly emphasize the affective construct component. In order to unfold the construct in a more exhaustive and differentiated manner, a scale for measuring university students' worry, avoidance, and emotionality cognitions was developed. In two samples of education science majors the present pilot study aimed at analyzing the scale's psychometric properties and at gaining preliminary validation results. Principal component analyses led to the formation of a unidimensional scale which appeared to be sufficiently reliable. Its relations to domain-specific self-belief and background variables turned out as theoretically expected -- thus, for the time being the scale should claim criterion validity.

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