Girls have more math anxiety

Math Anxiety

Girls report that have math anxiety on general survey measures but are not actually more anxious during math classes and exams. According to new research from Psychological Science, the research suggest that females are more anxious when it comes to mathematics than their male peers despite similar levels of achievement.

Math Anxiety

Girls have more math anxiety

The researcher, Thomas Gotz and Madeleine Bieg from University of Konstanz and the Thurgau University of Teacher Education and colleagues identified a critical limitation of previous studies examining math anxiety : They asked students to describe more generalised perceptions of math anxiety rather than assessing anxiety during actual math classes and exams.

The researchers conducted two studies in which they collected data from approximately 700 students from grades five to 11. In the first study, they compared student’s responses on two different measures : A questionnaire measuring anxiety about math tests and their real time self reports of anxiety directly before and during a math exam.

In the second study, they compared questionnaire measures of math anxiety with repeated real-time assessments obtained during math classes via mobile devices.
The finding is based from two studies replicated prior research and existing gender stereotypes, showing that girls reported more math anxiety than boys on generalised assessments, despite similar math achievement.

However, the data obtained during math exams and classes revealed that girls did not experience more anxiety than boys in real-life settings. The date suggest that lower self-reported competence in mathematics may underlie the disrepancy between the levels of anxiety reported by girls in the two settings. The researchers note that general questionnaires may allow inaccurate beliefs about math ability to negatively bias girls assessments of their math abilities and exacerbate their math anxiety.

The results also suggest that stereotyped beliefs regarding math ability, rather than actual ability or anxiety differences may be largely responsible for women not choosing to pursue careers in math-intensive domains.

Source :- HealthNewsDigest.com