Sex and Rural-Urban Differences in Standardized Achievement Scores and Mathematics Subskills
Keywords:
mathematics achievement, gender differences, rural-urban differences, standardized achievement tests, student ability, educational achievementAbstract
A mental ability test and an achievement battery were administered to a large sample (N = 4918) of Grades 4, 7, and 10 students from a mid-Western province in Canada. Rural-urban, as well as male-female differences in achievement, particularly in mathematics, were examined. When ability differences were controlled statistically, it was found that, in general, there was a rural superiority in achievement in a majority of subtests with no sex and jurisdiction interactions. Also, the results supported the general notion that females score better than males in verbal tests, while males score better than females in quantitative tests. The mathematics item clusters were investigated in greater detail by an examination of the mathematical subskills involved. The results are discussed in terms of previous findings and related to various theoretical postulations about gender differences in mathematical achievement.
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Copyright (c) 1987 Bikkar S. Randhawa , Dennis Hunt
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