Congressional hearing testimony reports, citing a 1979 ETS study second-hand, that females tend to do better on test items with female or neutral figures than on items with male figures¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 1989 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on an ERIC document (a report, conference paper or thesis). It is kept because 3 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q2 i? ETS research cited at the hearing found females tend to do better on items with more female or neutral figures than on items with male figures, and Rosser's own analysis of 24 SAT reading passages found references to 42 men and three women. → Sex and Race Differences on Standardized Tests: Oversight Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary 1989

Evidence¶

Sex and Race Differences on Standardized Tests: Oversight Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary 1989¶

Sex and Race Differences on Standardized Tests: Oversight Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, First Session. (1989). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED312276

q2 · written testimony reporting a 1979 ETS study second-hand · i? · the article prints no effect size for this finding · review · r1

Rosser's written testimony attributes this finding to a 1979 ETS study by Ekstrom, Lockheed and Donlon, quoted as the review reports it. She adds her own analysis of 24 SAT reading passages from 1984-85 finding references to 42 men and three women.

"Studies done by Educational Testing Service researchers as far back as 1979 (-Sex Differences and Sex Bias in Teat Content" by Ekstrom, Lockheed, Donlon, Educational Horizons) show that "females tend to do better on items that havemore female or neutral figures than on items in which there are male figures.""

Discussion¶

The evidence is second-hand: Rosser's written testimony to a congressional hearing quotes the finding from Ekstrom, Lockheed and Donlon (1979), which has not been read here, and the hearing record prints no data or effect size for it. Rosser's own count of men and women named in 24 SAT reading passages describes item content, not a score difference, so it does not by itself show that male-oriented content biases scores.

Learner Variables¶

• Gender — predictor: outcomes differ by group: a gap reflecting circumstances and treatment, not a cause

Related Claims¶

• Prior research attributes growing male superiority in word problem solving to age, with onset debated between sixth grade and high school — related
• Testimony at a 1987 congressional hearing reported 1985 SAT averages in which Black women scored 43 points below Black men and 264 points below white men, which the witness called a double penalty for minority females — related
• SAT scores underpredict the academic performance of high school girls, who average lower scores than boys despite higher grades — related
• PSAT-based National Merit scholarship selection distributes awards disproportionately to boys, with girls receiving 36 percent of scholarships — related
• Research on minority group testing has focused on test bias, linguistic minorities, and culture-fair tests, rarely on alternative symbolic forms — related
• Women admitted to MIT with lower SAT math scores perform as well as men in freshman math classes — related