Are there gender differences in reading achievement? An investigation using the high school and beyond data.

Abstract

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the relation of gender to reading achievement at the high school level. The data were drawn from the High School and Beyond (HSB) national survey that was sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics and conducted in 1980. Reading achievement was defined as performance on the vocabulary and comprehension measures developed for the HSB study. Information on 23,362 seniors and 24,678 sophomores was analyzed by examining the amount of variance in reading achievement accounted for by gender differences. The results for both seniors and sophomores indicated that gender accounted for less than 1% of the variance in reading achievement. These findings suggest that by the time students reach high school, the magnitude of gender differences in reading achievement as assessed by the HSB survey is small. The findings apply to vocabulary and short passage comprehension and are limited in providing insight about complex reading processes and lengthy text. The results are compared with findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress 1979-1980 report on reading and literature (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1982).

Gender, Context, and Reading: A Comparison of Students in 43 Countries

“…However, with thousands of participants in these studies, even very small differences in mean levels of performance are significant, though not necessarily meaningful. Moreover, the directions of effects in such studies were not consistent (e.g., Hogrebe et al, 1985;Rosen, 2001). On some reading measures, boys outperformed girls.…”

“…Gender has sometimes been linked to reading achievement variability as well (Hogrebe, Nist, & Newman, 1985;Rosen, 2001;Wagemaker et al, 1996). This study was intended to extend this literature by analyzing these facets at different levels of context, in addition to incorporating more specific reading-related variables at different contextual levels, to explain variance in reading achievement.…”

“…CHIU AND CHANG Large-scale cross-cultural studies (e.g., Hogrebe et al, 1985;Rosen, 2001;Wagemaker et al, 1996) have consistently shown some gender differences in reading comprehension. However, with thousands of participants in these studies, even very small differences in mean levels of performance are significant, though not necessarily meaningful.…”

Sex Differences in Reading Achievement

“…However, it was not complete. It omitted some data, such as all the Wechsler verbal intelligence studies and the study by Hogrebe, Nist, and Isadore (1985) who found no sex difference in reading achievement of 23,362 in-school seniors and 24,678 in-school sophomores in the results of High School and Beyond (HSB) national survey in 1980.…”

Senior High School Students’ Reading Comprehension of Graded Readers

“…Chiu and McBride-Chang (2006) conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study and concluded that there were significant gender differences in reading comprehension; girls' mean reading scores exceeded that of boys across 43 countries. However, some earlier studies revealed that there were no differences in reading comprehension (Hogrebe, Nist, & Newman, 1985;Rosen, 2001). In addition to the investigation of whether there were significant differences in reading comprehension between males and females, the present study extended earlier studies by further examining time spent on reading and reading strategy use in an extended reading context.…”