Characterizing the gender gap in introductory physics

By Lauren E. Kost, S. Pollock, Noah Finkelstein. 2009

208 citations recorded by the source corpus.

of males and females. Males and females have significantly different prior understandings of physics and mathematics. Females are less likely to take high school physics than males, although they are equally likely to take high school calculus. Males and females also differ in their incoming attitudes and beliefs about physics. This collection of background factors is analyzed to determine the extent to which each factor correlates with performance on a conceptual post-test and with gender. Binned by quintiles, we observe that males and females with similar pretest scores do not have significantly different post-test scores p0.2. The post-test data are then modeled using two regression models multiple regression and logistic regression to estimate the gender gap in post-test scores after controlling for these important prior factors. These prior factors account for about 70% of the observed gender gap. The results indicate that the gender gap exists in interactive physics classes at our institution but is largely associated with differences in previous physics and math knowledge and incoming attitudes and beliefs.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/040dfa7106d70640ce8cc437fcc10b26d98353ad

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Education

Citations in the corpus

Synthesis of Discipline-Based Education Research in Physics. (2014, methodology): “[390] used logistic regression analysis to determine that the odds of scoring above 60% on the post-test were not different for males and females when controlling for pretest scores (FMCE, math, and attitude), suggesting that preparation and background are responsible for the persistence of the gap,”
Gender gap on concept inventories in physics: what is consistent, what is inconsistent,and what factors influence the gap? (2013, methodology): “Years high school calculus x a FMCE [17]”
Fitting in to Move Forward (2017, background): “Women often report lower pSTEM self-efficacy than men, even when women and men have performed at parity, for example, when they earn statistically equivalent pSTEM course GPAs (Kost-Smith et al., 2009; Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, & McManus, 2011).”