Questions About Physics: The Case of a Turkish ‘Ask a Scientist’ Website

Abstract

The physics questions submitted to an 'ask a scientist' website were classified with respect to field of interest in physics, type of requested information in the question (factual, explanatory, etc.), and motivation for asking the question (applicative or nonapplicative). In addition, differences in the number of females' and males' questions in these classifications were determined. Analysis of 995 physics questions submitted to the website indicated that modern physics questions (30.7%) were the most frequent while vibrations and wave motion questions (3.3%) were the least frequent. More than half of the questions (57.8%) were submitted to request factual information. Motivation to ask a question was inferred from the question, and was generally not related to direct and/or personal application. There were obvious differences in the number of questions asked by females and males: 84.7% of questions were asked by males while 15.3% were asked by females. However, significant gender differences were not observed in field of interest in physics, type of information requested in the question, and motivation for asking the question.

Quantifying the Gender Gap in Science Interests

“…A similar trend was described among Italian users of an Ask-AScientist service, where females posed fewer questions dealing with mathematics, physics, and technology than males and more questions in the fields of ethology, botany, general biology, and health care (Falchetti et al, 2007). This finding was also mirrored by an analysis of questions submitted to a Turkish Ask-A-Scientist site, which found that only 15% of the physics questions were submitted by females versus 52% of the biology questions (Yerdelen-Damar & Eryılmaz, 2009).…”

“…These findings (or parts thereof) have been repeated in several countries, including Scotland (Stark & Gray, 1999), Australia (Dawson, 2000;Kahle, Parker, Rennie, & Riley, 1993;Woodward & Woodward, 1998), the USA (Burkam, Lee, & Smerdon, 1997;Farenga & Joyce, 1999;Jones, Howe, & Rua, 2000), England (Murphy & Whitelegg, 2006;Osborne & Collins, 2001;Spall, Barrett, Stanisstreet, Dickson, & Boyes, 2003), Italy (Falchetti, Caravita, & Sperduti, 2007), Israel (Baram-Tsabari & Yarden, 2005;Friedler & Tamir, 1990;Trumper, 2006), Turkey (Yerdelen-Damar & Eryılmaz, 2009), Germany (Hoffmann, 2002), and Japan (Scantlebury, Baker, Sugi, Yoshida, & Uysal, 2007), and in international studies, such as TIMSS (Mullis, Martin, Fierros, Goldberg, & Stemler, 2000), "Science and Scientists" (Sjøberg, 2000), and "Relevance of Science Education" (Busch, 2005;Jenkins & Nelson, 2005;Lavonen, Juuti, Uitto, Meisalo, & Byman, 2005;Schreiner, 2006;Sjøberg & Schreiner, 2002). This gender gap in focus of interest is also apparent among female students who are interested in science and intend to continue studying it (Murphy & Whitelegg, 2006;Zohar, 2003).…”

“…Therefore, studies have used student's selfgenerated science-related questions, submitted to Ask-A-Scientist sites and TV shows, as a tool to probe their scientific interests (Baram-Tsabari & Kaadni, 2009;Baram-Tsabari, Sethi, Bry, & Yarden, 2006, 2009Baram-Tsabari & Yarden, 2005Falchetti et al, 2007;Yerdelen-Damar & Eryılmaz, 2009). Student questions submitted to a children's science magazine (Cakmakci, Sevindik, Pektas, Uysal, Kole, & Kavak, 2009) have been used as indicators of interest as well.…”

Gender Dependency and Cultural Independency of Science Interest in an Open and Distant Science Learning Environment

“…This stereotypic gap in gender interest has been described previously in many countries, both in formal and informal learning environments (e.g. Baram-Tsabari & Yarden, 2008;Dawson, 2000;Jenkins & Nelson, 2005;Jones, Howe, & Rua, 2000;Murphy & Whitelegg, 2006;Yerdelen-Damar & Eryılmaz, 2009). A significant difference (p < 0.001) was also found between the age groups as far as the distribution of question topics: interest in biology decreases with age while interest in technology increases.…”

Identifying Students' Interests in Biology Using a Decade of Self-Generated Questions

“…However, the listed topics are based on adult-centric views of what subjects should be meaningful to the students. To overcome this problem, a naturalistic method was developed for using students' self-generated questions as a source of information about their interests (Baram-Tsabari & Kaadni, 2009;Baram-Tsabari, Sethi, Bry, & Yarden, 2006;Baram-Tsabari, Sethi, Bry, & Yarden, 2009;Baram-Tsabari & Yarden, 2005, 2007BaramTsabari & Yarden, 2009;Cakmakci, Sevindik, Pektas, Uysal, Kole, & Kavak, 2009;Falchetti, Caravita, & Sperduti, 2007;Yerdelen-Damar & Eryılmaz, 2009). By studying students' questions, one can learn about what students are interested in and what they want to know about a given topic (Biddulph, Symington, & Osborne, 1986;Chin & Chia, 2004).…”