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Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

wsj.com

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Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#51

Post by iopq »

mabbo wrote: post #41

Some statistical problems I can see here: 1. Sample size n=80. You would need a pretty incredible result for a sample size this small to be significant. 2. All students from the same region of France. Will this result carry over to other countries? Other cultures? 3. The treatment groups were chosen from pre-existing classes. Classes whose composition may not be random. It's a cool result, and it should definitely be…

1. What sample size is necessary for a result of this magnitude to be significant? Because boys did 34% better when it was framed as a game. Did they have to double their scores for it to be significant at this sample size?

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#52

Post by 131hn »

kuschku wrote: post #19
mgraczyk wrote: post #17

The paper is paywalled so I can only read the abstract, but I am super curious to learn how the researchers were able to confidently determine the male students' rationale. The researchers claim that stereotype threat caused the male students to perform worse on the reading test when the students were not told the test was a game. How did the researchers figure this out without even asking the students? They are so c…

Regarding the paywall: http://www.sciencedirect.com.sci-hub.cc/science/article/pii/...

hmmm, so THAT's how it can be used for ! Thank you for the link.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#53

Post by Chathamization »

ctrlalt_g wrote: post #38
rfrey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of being patronizing, you're probably being downvoted by parents who figure you don't have kids. We have spent many years trying to present gender-neutral environments to our children. Yet at age 3 my son completely ignored the giraffe we were trying to point out at the zoo, and would only focus on the irrigation pump. That kind of experience was repeated often with him and my daughters. One daughter would on…

If the parents are gendered, how can they possibly present a gender-neutral environment? They would have to cross-dress, vary their speech and mannerism, vary the length of their hair, be androgynous... Perhaps the parents you're referring to are failing to realize just how strongly gendered their lives are.

> Perhaps the parents you're referring to are failing to realize just how strongly gendered their lives are.

Yes, that's a large part of it. I think people also underestimate how much children pick up from society in general. Beyond what they get from their parents, they're still going to be meeting friends and family members, going outside and seeing other humans interact, other people are probably going to be buying them gifts (even if you try to avoid this, there will be times when people spring them on you), etc. There are a lot of influences we've stopped noticing because they're so pervasive.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#55

Post by ZoF »

Zelmor wrote: post #10
tp101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it is a bit too simplistic to conclude that the boys prefer competitive environments more than girls?

What matters is raising and parent models, not gender.

Ah so it's nature _or_ nurture now? It must be completely boolean?

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#56

Post by jamesrcole »

brainpool wrote: post #54

No, just no. This kind of articles makes me cringe. The fact that the journalist is obviously aware of the limited scope in the research by stating the caveats makes it unresponsible publishing.

> The fact that the journalist is obviously aware of the limited scope in the research by stating the caveats makes it unresponsible publishing.

I haven't read the article, but isn't it the opposite? Isn't it being responsible to state the caveats?

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#57

Post by LynchDeez »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #40
jokoon wrote: post #21

I'm a man and I really dislike competitive aspects of society. I mean if I'm playing a game and it's for fun, I'm okay with it, as long as everyone play to play, not play to win. If I'm literally competing to earn a living, or if it ends up in praising winners and blaming losers, it won't be enjoyable, and I'd rather not play at all. Having humility also means that when you win, you also congratulate losers for playi…

You are right and you are probably left leaning politically and are pro immigration, also you are probably not physically strong. The reason for your avoidance of competition is both environmentally affected and genetic. Your parents, maybe even grandparents, were probably raised in an environment where they didn't have to struggle too much at life. This kind of life changes genetic expression in a way that adapts to…

Such a bizarre group of baseless assumptions.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#58

Post by mabbo »

iopq wrote: post #51
mabbo wrote: post #41

Some statistical problems I can see here: 1. Sample size n=80. You would need a pretty incredible result for a sample size this small to be significant. 2. All students from the same region of France. Will this result carry over to other countries? Other cultures? 3. The treatment groups were chosen from pre-existing classes. Classes whose composition may not be random. It's a cool result, and it should definitely be…

1. What sample size is necessary for a result of this magnitude to be significant? Because boys did 34% better when it was framed as a game. Did they have to double their scores for it to be significant at this sample size?

> boys did 34% better

No, two particular classes of students had their boys do 34%. In reality, the sample size was 4, not 80. They choose 4 classrooms, and saw these results.

If the researchers switched the classroom treatment selections, are you certain we would have seen the same result? Or did we really just find out that boys in those two classrooms happen to be 34% better at reading?

Those classrooms where boys did worse might have done worse for a large number of other reasons: those schools might be on the 'bad' side of town where less affluent students tend to go (happens all the time in small towns); that classroom might have been the one where the school has put all the trouble-maker kids because they know this particular teacher has the ability to teach those kinds of kids (or, conversely, that class might be the one that saw the huge boost when it was a game); the classes who did worse might have had a classmate dying in hospital that week, and the boys just didn't do very well under those conditions.

There are too many other completely reasonable answers that aren't related to the test itself, given the methods used in this study.

How I'd repeat the experiment: pool all the children before randomly selecting them for treatment groups to avoid bias from their origin classroom.

Edit: And to be clear, I'm not saying the results are incorrect. They might be onto something amazing here. They just happen to be bad at statistics. Maybe they should frame it as a game.

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#59

Post by iopq »

mabbo wrote: post #58
iopq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. What sample size is necessary for a result of this magnitude to be significant? Because boys did 34% better when it was framed as a game. Did they have to double their scores for it to be significant at this sample size?

> boys did 34% better No, two particular classes of students had their boys do 34%. In reality, the sample size was 4, not 80. They choose 4 classrooms, and saw these results. If the researchers switched the classroom treatment selections, are you certain we would have seen the same result? Or did we really just find out that boys in those two classrooms happen to be 34% better at reading? Those classrooms where boys…

That's not how you count sample size. If there were four "classes" of one million boys and girls, does it still make the sample size four?

Re: Told reading tests are a game, boys score higher

#60

Post by spectrum1234 »

jokoon wrote: post #21

I'm a man and I really dislike competitive aspects of society. I mean if I'm playing a game and it's for fun, I'm okay with it, as long as everyone play to play, not play to win. If I'm literally competing to earn a living, or if it ends up in praising winners and blaming losers, it won't be enjoyable, and I'd rather not play at all. Having humility also means that when you win, you also congratulate losers for playi…

Like or dislike, you would be the first to die in 99% of societies, human or otherwise.

This may get downvoted but don't shoot the messenger. You can't "hate" something that just "is".

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