Assignment 18: Annotated Bibliography 2

Mau, Wei-Cheng and Richard Lynn. "Gender

Differences in Homework and Test Scores in

Mathematics, Reading and Science at Tenth and

Twelfth Grade." Psychology, Evolution &

Gender, vol. 2, no. 2, Aug. 2011, pp. 119-125.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14616660050200904.

In this doctoral dissertation, the gender differences in homework and test scores in math were studied in this correlational study of tenth and twelfth graders. The data used was obtained from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) and was then computed to get means and standard deviations of test scores and amount of homework done. It was found that tenth grade boys score higher on mathematics assessments whereas girls possessed higher cumulative grades than the boys. This could be for a variety of reasons such as the tendency for girls to be more consistently hard working versus their male counterparts. This dissertation examined not only the statistics involved with this study but also the possible reasons behind it. However, just because there is a correlation between gender and how well they do in mathematics, there is not necessarily a causation.

Some possible quotes that I could use from the article are:

“It has been widely found that females tend to perform better in coursework and examinations than would be predicted from their scores on tests of aptitude, intelligence, or knowledge,” (pg 1-2).

“Among high school students, males tend to perform better on tests in mathematics but females tend to do better on grades,” (pg 2).

“The first is that females have a stronger work ethic than males which motivates them to expend greater effort on coursework and preparation for examinations,” (pg 2 ).

This source is credible because it is a doctoral dissertation written by Wei-Cheng Mau and Richard Lynn from Wichita State University and the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Ireland respectively. Since they obtained all raw data from a government agency and they simply computed statistics from the given data, their conclusions are credible and reliable. The source was also found through the Galileo website, and this archives many credible sources as a student resource.

I will use this article to help me in the process of helping of collecting my data and then finding the statistical significance of it as well. By comparing my results to the ones found in this article to come to a comparable conclusion. This article adds a template for my research as well as an object for comparison.