Gender Differences for 6-12th Grade Students over Bloom's Cognitive Domain.

This study considered the possibility that different formats of objective test questions might differentially favor males or females and that males and females might respond differently to objective questions aimed at assessing abilities at different levels of Bloom's cognitive domain. Class tests were constructed on recently taught topics, with each test containing questions in three parallel subtests, multiple-choice, true-false, and matching. Each subtest had six questions, and each of the questions was targeted to one level of Bloom's Cognitive Domain by the test writers. Questions at each level were matched to the same expected difficulty level by the writing team using a variant of the Angoff method. This design was replicated in 5 schools across 4 curriculum areas with 65 male and 123 female students in grades 6 through 12. Results show only one significant difference in gender performances across the levels of Bloom's Cognitive Domain. This is a female advantage at the level of Analysis. A comparison of mean male and female scores on the three subtest formats also shows only one statistically significant advantage--an advantage for females on the matching questions. This was found to be due to significant female advantages at the Analysis and Synthesis levels. The relationship and relevance of these findings is discussed in relation to gender differences in science and mathematics test performances. (SLD)