The present study was undertaken in response to the contradictory findings in the literature. It contributed confirmation to some existing work and disconfirmed other work. No decisive outcomes were forthcoming, however the use of a standardized set of measures does lend validity to the efforts made. Problems that need to be addressed by future research are measurement of sex role orientation, methodology for success/failure manipulation, and evaluating task with respect to sex stereotyping. First, it is still not clear that the sex role orientation measure used encompasses enough of the role behaviors of males and females to classify them into homogenous groupings. Future research should focus on improved indicators for sex role orientation. Second, the methodology used appeared to be successful since the students were involved in the tasks and accepted the feedback as legitimate. However, the experimenters all felt somewhat uncomfortable setting up the manipulation. Perhaps other methods can be devised to circumvent the need to provide false or contrived feedback. Third, one consideration that may have affected the outcome was the 'masculine' (math) and 'feminine' (verbal) nature of the tasks. Much of the literature discusses sex-stereotyping of tasks and counterbalancing the tasks would be necessary in order to assert that no cultural effects are confounded with expectations. The results of the present study do require examining the masculine or feminine nature of the tasks as a possible explanation for unpredicted outcomes. Although sex differences were frequently reported in the literature the effects of sex in this study were in interaction with sex role orientation, achievement motivation, and task outcome. This suggests that inclusion of individual differences within sex adds significantly to the clarification of sex differences. It is felt that this conclusion is the real contribution that this research made to the study of sex differences in achievement behavior / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_25087 |
| Date | January 1984 |
| Contributors | Sharp, Robbie N (Author) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds