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Re: Gender bias on FCI???



Cindy, you seem to assume that these results are due to a bias in the test
per se -- why do you rule out other possibilities???

Jim Green



At 10:36 AM 3/11/97 -0500, you wrote:
I gave the FCI to students taking intro physics here at Vassar on the first
day of class. Most were in the calculus based course. I had 20 males and
34 females. Here are some summaries. I can send the data by hard copy if
you want to see data for all questions. I will list here the questions
where the difference between males and females was more than 15%

numbers indicate percent answering correctly ( sample was 20 males and 34
females)

question 1 90% of males 65% of females

question 5 55% of males 12% of females

question 7 85% of males 68% of females

question 8 70% of males 41% of females

question 10 80% of males 44% of females

question 13 55% of males 21% of females

question 14 70% of males 41% of females

question 16 70% of males 41% of females

question 22 45% of males 29% of females

question 25 25% of males 9% of females

question 28 50% of males 26% of females


Overall for all questions taken together 51% were answered correctly by
males and 39% were answered correctly for females.

On two questiosn women had higher percentages for correct answers of
perhaps any significance (i.e. more than 5%)

these are questions 9 45% for males 56% for females

and question 19 50% for males and 68% for females

If anyone else has looked at gender data for the FCI, I would be interested
in knowing results. I would also be interested if anyone had raw data that
could be studied this way. I still want to look at the backgrounds of
these students as I have information on who had HS physics and have not
factored that in in any way yet.

You can reply to me directly or to the list.

Cindy Schwarz
Associate Professor of Physics
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie NY 12604-0039

email:schwarz@vassar.edu
phone:914-437-7349
http://noether.vassar.edu/~schwarz/