Dormitory Students Experiences of the Night before Exam: A Phenomenological Study

The present study is aimed at investigating dormitory students’ experiences of the night before exam for explaining its different aspects and dimensions. The research uses a qualitative research method and phenomenological technique. To conduct the study, 12 students were selected from among dormitory students of Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University via the purposive sampling technique until data saturation. Then, they were interviewed. The interviews were transcribed with participants’ permissions. Then, the sentences and clauses of interviews were analyzed using Colaizzi's method. the results indicated that 8 main themes and 20 subthemes can be extracted from interviews: professor (the teaching style of professors and their personality), curriculum (the favorability of the curriculum and the volume of its contents), sleep (sleep degree and sleep quality), emotional responses (reduction of tolerance threshold, lack of concentration and physiological effects, stress, fear) , environmental characteristics (physical spaces and mental spaces), courses and fields of study (academic degree, field of study and beginning of the course and the beginning of exams), communication management (control and creation of optimal interactions and the occurrence of social network disruptions), and study and planning skills (study and planning skills and readiness). The obtained results indicate that the most important characteristics of the night before exam is that some of the factors affecting exam anxiety are dependent on students’ personality characteristics, while some others are those conditions common for most students and cannot be removed by themselves.