Needs Analysis to Define a Digital Learning Game Aimed at Coping with Mathematics Anxiety

This document presents a design-based needs analysis intended to inform a digital learning game that helps children aged 5 to 16 cope with mathematics anxiety. Its central premise is that roughly one in six students experiences moderate to high math anxiety, which can impair working memory and degrade performance. The authors draw on a 2025 meta-analysis showing that digital games have a negligible effect on math anxiety, in contrast to a moderate effect for non-digital games, and they attribute this gap largely to the scarcity of games explicitly designed to target anxiety and the predominance of single-player formats.

The study's methodology combines a literature review, a comparative curriculum analysis across five European countries, questionnaires, and teacher focus groups. The curriculum analysis found that mathematics anxiety is rarely addressed explicitly in national frameworks, although digital tools and games are generally permitted, with the degree of integration varying by country. Early Finnish data from 13 teachers, 22 students, and 104 parents indicate that adults widely observe signs of math anxiety, with 74% of parents reporting negative emotions during mathematics tasks. Respondents valued adaptive difficulty, clear structure, and emotionally safe design.

Preliminary needs point toward specific game mechanics, including scaffolding, adaptive difficulty, positive feedback, and principles drawn from positive psychology. The authors are explicit that these conclusions are provisional. The Finnish sample is small and confined to a single country, so the findings should be regarded as directional rather than definitive until full multinational data collection is complete. The document closes with a disclosure of AI-assisted language editing and literature identification, followed by a reference list of roughly 35 sources spanning mathematics anxiety, its relationship to performance, and the effectiveness of digital and gamified learning interventions.