Differential Performance of Males and Females on Easy to Hard Item Arrangements: Influence of Feedback at the Item Level

Abstract

Differential test performance by males and females was reported on a quantitative examination as a function of item arrangement (Plake, Ansorge, Parker, and Lowry, 1982). Males performed at a higher level than females on tests the items of which were arranged from easy to hard. Plake and Ansorge (1982) speculated that this male superiority may be a function of differential reinforcement in backgrounds of males and females. Using a Latin Square design, this study provided item performance feedback for a nonquantitative examination. Significant sex-by-order effects did not occur, but the lack of this effect could possibly have been due to the use of a nonquantitative examination (Plake and Ansorge, 1983). It still remains to be seen whether, in using a quantitative examination, differential effects of item feedback may be a source of explanation for evidence of sex-by-order effects. Implications for validity of test score interpretation are considered briefly.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 26 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.