From: schultz@unixg.ubc.ca (Stewart Schultz)
Subject: Re: Biological Sex Differences? ("Women only" excusable ?)
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 02:11:45 GMT

In article <1617@idacrd.UUCP> desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins) writes:
>
>It seems completely plausible that, in general, more boys than girls
>routinely follow sports scores and make use of such statistics, and thus
>boys will have a better understanding than girls that "winning percentage"
>can be computed as 100*wins/(wins+losses).  This can also be
>experimentally tested, by observing if there is in fact a gender bias in
>the scores on such questions which is not present on questions without
>sports-statistic content.
>
>>2.  Basketball, at the high school and college level, is played by both
>>men and women anyway.
>>3.  Replace *basketball* with *field hockey*.
>>4.  Replace *basketball* with *4-dimensional Martian-steam-polo*.
>
>These points are not germane.  The issue is not basketball, it is
>familiarity with the statistics.

But if this is the case, then it's pretty silly to claim that a male-
oriented context in the test questions is responsible for girls' lower 
scores.

If girls' lower participation in certain 'male' activities means lower 
exposure to basic mathematical concepts such as percentages, then 
they will do worse regardless of the context of the question.  This 
appears to be what you are arguing.  If context doesn't matter, then 
framing the question in terms of basketball or any other sport 
doesn't matter.  Girls' performance will be lower regardless, not 
because the test is biased, but because it is accurately measuring 
their lower ability resulting from this cultural asymmetry. 
(Of course questions that hinge on concepts like earned-run
average would be unfair, but these are so rare they can't possibly
account for the difference.)

I think it's pretty clear from recent research that girls/women tend 
to score lower on math tests regardless of how the questions are 
framed.  I don't know what the response to this difference should be 
(let's see: Clinton -- throw more money at public education; Bush -- 
get the condoms out of the classroom and bring back Christian 
values), but scapegoating the test writers isn't going to accomplish 
much. 

-S. Schultz
---
Ref:

Sappington, John; Larsen, Chris. 1991. Sex differences in math 
  problem solving as a function of gender-specific item content. 
  Educational & Psychological Measurement 51(4): 1041-1048. 
  
Abstract: Constructed a 15-item test with parallel forms. Each form 
  contained 5 male-familiar items, 5 female-familiar items, and 5 
  neutrally worded items. Male-familiar items on Form A were 
  rephrased to construct the female-familiar items of Form B. 
  Similarly, the female-familiar items of Form A were reconstructed as 
  the male- familiar items of Form B. Neutral items were identically 
  worded on the 2 forms. Thus, the items were equal with respect to 
  the operations needed to solve them as well as the complexity of 
  units and numerical relationships with them. Males outperformed 
  females in all item conditions. The hypothesis that biased item 
  wording contributes to gender differences in math problem solving 
  was not supported.
Xref: sparky soc.men:16373 alt.child-support:3168 soc.women:16543