Abstract
This study aimed to explore the influence of test anxiety and academic performance of Public High School learners, using the mixed-methods design, an adopted questionnaire to gather the information that will answer research question in the quantitative phase was used. For the qualitative phase, the researcher interviewed seven public high school learners for Focused Group Discussion and 10 public high school learners students for in-Depth Interview. Different statistical tools were used such as: mean, standard deviation, frequency count and Pearson r. The results revealed that Public High School learners experienced moderate level of anxiety when taking the examinations. There were three academic subjects considered on this study namely: Math, English and Science. Based on the statistical results, English got the highest mean, described as approaching to proficiency; this means that the GPA of the learner was fairly good. Science gained an average mean described as moderate, Math gained an mean average likewise described as moderate. This means that the learners are in the approaching to proficiency level or in a moderate description in all three subjects. In the result of qualitative data, there were themes that emerged from responses of the participants such: struggling with cognitive skills, feeling of fear about failure and experiencing physical discomfort. The salient quantitative and qualitative findings were parallel with each other.
Keywords: Public high school learners, Pearson r, mixed method, convergent parallel design, Philippines.