cover image: Graduate Research Class Performance by Gender.

Graduate Research Class Performance by Gender.

This study investigated the effectiveness of an approach to teaching an advanced research class by comparing test scores of male and female students on a test of research fundamentals before and after the course. Four classes, between 2001 and 2003, all taught by the same instructor, incorporated article critiques (based on an instrument from V. Wilson and A. Ongwuegbuzie), a critique-based examination, and an oral presentation of a grant application completed by the student. There was complete information for 51 students, 31 females and 20 males. A 30-item posttest yielded a Cronbachs alpha of 0.63. Since there were no initial differences in the pretest scores as to sex, a two-sample t-test was run on the posttest scores. The assumptions of normality and homoscedasticity were verified by the Omnibus Normality of Residuals and Modified-Levene Equal-Variance tests, but random selection was not possible since students are not randomly assigned to classes. The t-test indicated that the null hypothesis of no statistical significant difference between the mean pretest and posttest scores could not be rejected at the 0.05 level (t=0.0079, p=0.99). The effect size, d=0.05, was negligible. The Mann-Whitney U-test agreed. Results indicate that there was no practical difference in the test scores in the classes, suggesting no particular performance differences between males and females. Two-sample test reports are attached. (Contains 17 references.) (Author/SLD)

Authors

Kennedy, Robert L., Broadston, Pamela M.

Peer Reviewed
F
Publication Type
['Reports - Research', 'Speeches/Meeting Papers']
Published in
United States of America

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