Picho and Schmader Reading Flashcards
What did the present study examine?
what were the demographics of the participants?
What did they find about cross-gender comparisons?
What was the influence of students perceptions of stereotype expectancies?
What do these findings support?
Should we always assume males are immune from stereotype threat relating to math?
What does this suggest for prevention of stereotype threat?
The present study examined the effect of gender- based stereotype threat (ST) on the mathematics performance of high school students in Uganda, East Africa, as moderated by students’ stereotype endorsement and/or their perceptions of stereotypic expectancies by others.
Participants were 190 ninth grade students (age 14–15, senior 2, in Uganda) from all-female and coed boarding schools. Only perceived stereo- typic expectancies by others significantly moderated ST ef- fects on performance.
A reminder of cross-gender compari- sons led both young women and young men to underperform if they assumed that the researchers expected their own gender to do worse than the other gender.
Importantly, students’ per- ceptions of the stereotypic expectancies of authority figures (i.e. researchers) mattered more for predicting their math per- formance than did students’ own endorsement of stereotypes.
Collectively, these findings support a basic assumption of ST theory– that knowledge of a cultural stereotype is a prerequi- site to the ST experience.
Therefore, studies conducted with younger samples and in diverse cultural contexts should es- tablish participants’ awareness of the stereotype in question.
Also, regarding gender and math stereotypes, it should not be assumed that males will always be immune from stereotype- based performance deficits on quantitative tasks when tested in different cultures.
Finally, results suggest that conveying an expectation that young men and young women have equal ability and potential might be important to preventing ST among younger age groups.
Students were assigned to control and experimental conditions using a unique six-digit index number that was randomly assigned to individual students at the beginning of the study and prior to administering the surveys. The third digit of the index number represented assignment to the control condition (1) or experimental condition (2). The last three digits of the six digit index number uniquely identified participants in each condition.
Data collection occurred in three phases, each one week apart. First, a pretest of math performance was administered by mathematics teachers one week after students had returned from their vacation and after all consent forms had been col- lected. This pretest was framed by teachers as an assessment to gauge their mastery of material covered in previous terms. The following week, students assigned to the control condition com- pleted the study as a group in a separate classroom from those assigned to the threat condition. They first completed a battery of psychological measures (in the order reported in the follow- ing section), followed by the manipulation of ST and a post-test measure of math performance one week later. Students received the ST manipulation as part of the task instructions attached to the first page of the math test. The same manipulation was also read out loud by the male research assistant. The PSAT was presented as a problem-solving exercise to students in the con- trol condition and as a math test diagnostic of ability to those in the ST condition. Additionally, participants in the ST condition were told that, previously, gender differences had consistently been shown on the math test, but the direction of this difference was left unspecified.
Priming instructions for the ST condition were as follows:
You are about to take the Math Achievement Test (MAT). The MAT is a test of one’s mathematical skills, and has been reliable in predicting students’ ability to excel in future advanced levels of mathematics courses. In the past, the MAT has successfully distinguished stu- dents with a natural ability to excel in mathematics from
those lacking the skills to be successful in math. The test has also consistently shown there to be differences in performance between boys and girls. In today’s session we want to get a measure of your math ability using MAT. You may find some of the questions challenging, however, they are all in the range of ability for most college students. We ask that you take this test seriously and make a genuine effort so that we can collect accurate data. Your performance on this test will be used to help us establish performance norms for men and women. After the test, we will provide you with feedback about your performance and ask you some questions about the test-taking experience. Please answer the questions pro- vided below to the best of your ability. Your perfor- mance on this exam will be compared to the perfor- mance of senior 2 boys taking the same test. Good Luck!
limitation?
Earlier we noted that performance on the math test was low, without much variability in test scores (none scored higher than 8 on the 23 item test). Therefore one limitation to our study was the restriction of range on performance that might have decreased power and attenuated bivariate relations be- tween variables (Shadish et al. 2002). A more sensitive math- ematics test with more heterogeneity might have yielded ef- fects much larger than what was observed in our study. Future studies might benefit from using assessments that are difficult enough to elicit ST but not so difficult that floor effects arise.
Second, although the sample used in the present study was considerably large, variability on the variable PREP was un- even, with smaller samples below, and above, the scale mid- point respectively (i.e., 20.97% and 12.9% for coed females; 7.9%, and 38.1% for coed males). Thus the interpretation of findings related to the moderation of PREP on ST is tempered by the relatively small sample upon which these findings were based. We do recommend, however, that future replication stud- ies be conducted with larger samples to validate these findings. We certainly acknowledge the need for a larger sample and attempted to do so, but obtaining samples of understudied pop- ulations in regions of the world without well-developed infra- structure for research proved to be quite challenging.
Finally, study participants came from nationally ranked low-performing schools situated in an economically impoverished region of the country. This might explain the floor effects on mathematics performance in our study, which might not be generalizable to or representative of the perfor- mance of the high school student population in Uganda. Thus the scope of our findings probably should be limited to Ugandan student subpopulations similar to that from which the study samples were derived.
Discussion
Taken together, our results suggest that in this particular cultural context and within this age group, it is adolescents’ knowledge, and not internalization of gender stereotypes, that might predict their susceptibility to experiencing ST effects. The suggestion that researchers would be conducting cross- sex comparisons led young men under stereotype threat to underperform if they assumed the researchers expected young women to do better and led young women to underperform if they assumed the researchers expected young men to do bet- ter. Thus, it should not be assumed that young men will always be immune from performance deficits on quantitative tasks.
The experience of stereotype threat assumes knowledge of a cultural stereotype, but as we have seen, this knowledge might vary greatly with younger samples (and perhaps also in novel cultural contexts). Therefore it is important to take into consideration stereotype knowledge and as well as other developmental ST factors when conducting research designed to generalize existing findings to new populations. These var- iables could very well account for some of the variability in ST in adolescents and children and, as such, provide a means to reconcile mixed findings in this under-studied population.
That said, it is unclear whether the variance in stereotypic expectancies observed in our study was due to cultural or developmental factors. There simply is not sufficient empiri- cal research regarding cultural climate in Uganda as it relates to math and science education. The limited amount of research in Uganda (Kaahwa 2012; Kakooza 2004) seems to indicate. there might be less cultural consensus on gender stereotypes concerning math ability. However, prior test scores and survey data reviewed earlier suggests that a strong math = male bias does exist in Uganda. Another possibility is that young chil- dren and adolescents might not yet be fully aware of broader cultural stereotypes and that stereotype awareness could vary based on one’s exposure (or lack thereof) of these stereotypes at the micro-cultural level (i.e. peers, and family). Indeed, previous research indicates significant variation in the beliefs of 4–8 year-old British children regarding gender differences in academics (Hartley and Sutton 2013). Also, ST in female adolescents is moderated by mothers’ endorsement of gender stereotypes regarding mathematics (Tomasetto et al. 2011). A recent meta-analysis of ST in children revealed a small but reliable effect, although tests of available moderators did not explain the observed variability in effect sizes (Flore and Wicherts 2015). It appears, based on findings from our study, that stereotype knowledge might potentially explain the het- erogeneity of effects especially in younger samples.
discussion
As noted, there has been a paucity of stereotype threat research in non-WEIRD contexts and with adolescent populations, yet diversity in research across various population groups is es- sential to building a unified theory of stereotype threat. The present study adds to the small literature in these populations by examining stereotype threat effects on the mathematics performance of high school students in a country that differs from the United States and other Western European countries where most ST research has been conducted, which is impor- tant for a number of reasons.
It seems likely that ST might be moderated by different factors in adolescent versus college-age groups. Thus efforts to remedy ST among susceptible individuals in the early school years might require extensive research with adolescent populations geared toward a critical understanding of moderators of stereotype threat in this age group. Accordingly, the present study contributes to our understanding of stereotype expectancies as a moderator of stereotype threat, a variable that has received surprising little attention in the prior literature although it is often assumed to be a fundamental assumption of the theory. Specifically, our study’s findings show that as studies are carried out with younger samples and in diverse cultural contexts, it becomes more impor- tant to establish the basic assumption that participants have acti- vated the stereotype in question.
Our study also improves our comprehension of ST in African cultural settings. To that end, we hope that these find- ings provide a platform for future research to conduct large, confirmatory replication studies in these cultural settings. This would significantly advance our understanding of the gener- ality of the stereotype threat to other contexts culturally dis- tinct from the West. Consequently, this research would inform future efforts to tailor culturally and age-appropriate interven- tions to counteract pernicious effects of the phenomenon and level the playing field for young women and young men in mathematics and science.
