Introduction: The present study aims to compare the effectiveness of meta-cognitive intervention, along with Meichenbaum’s self-instructional approach, in the reduction of meta-cognitive beliefs of students suffering from test anxiety.

Materials & methods: This was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test scheme and control group. The statistical population consists of all female students with test anxiety from public high-schools in the city of Ilam and in the academic year 2014-2015. First, one of the girls' high schools in the city of Ilam was randomly chosen and the anxiety test was performed for 500 students. Then, 45 students who were diagnosed with test anxiety, were randomly distributed in two test and one control group. 8 sessions of therapeutic interventions was performed on the test groups, while the control group didn’t receive any intervention. Spielberger’s anxiety test and Wels’s meta- cognitive belief test was performed in order to identify people with test anxiety and to assess meta-cognitive beliefs, respectively. Data were analyzed using analysis of covariance.

Findings: The obtained results indicate that meta-cognitive therapy has been more effective compared to self-instructional and the control group in terms of the following components: “positive beliefs about worry”, “need for control”, and “negative beliefs about uncontrollability and danger of worry”, and no significant difference was observed between the self-instructional and control groups.Also,meta-cognitive therapy and self-instructional groups were more effective than the control group in terms of “cognitive self-consciousness”.

Discussion & Conclusions: Meta-cognitive therapy can be used to reduce meta-cognitive beliefs in people with test anxiety.