Written Communication Apprehension of Accounting Students

Abstract

The paper presents a demographic distribution of the subjective manifestations of anxiety in written communication of Portuguese higher accounting students. The students completed a questionnaire provided online, and data collection ended up with 813 valid participations. Data were processed using IBM, SPSS-27, applying descriptive statistics. The findings showed that students who feel more apprehension in writing are those from the 2nd curricular year. In contrast, students in the 3rd year of the course exhibit the highest levels of Written Communication Apprehension and all dimensions (Positivity towards writing, Negativity towards writing, Evaluation apprehension, Self-efficacy and writing). The results are also consistent across all four dimensions by gender type, with both males and females having less difficulty in the positivity towards writing construct. The group of students aged 40 years or less has a total Written Communication Apprehension higher than the other age groups, denoting a greater difficulty in writing. The paper contributes to the body of literature since it is the first to evaluate Portuguese accounting students' written communication apprehension level. Moreover, it fosters the awareness of higher institutions' education about their effective contribution to fulfilling students' and employers' aspirations.