Abstract
A comprehensive, statistical review of gender differences in verbal performance has not been conducted in several decades and the majority of previous work on this topic used published studies that often include small, non-representative samples. The introduction of national legislation in US public schools required schools to assess and publicly report verbal performance, thus providing verbal assessment data for millions of American students. The current study presents a meta-analysis of gender differences in US state verbal assessments. Data were collected from the departments of education in 16 states representing more than 10 million US students in grades 3 through 11. Results indicated a small gender difference favoring females for overall verbal performance (d = 0.29). However, when type of assessment was considered, the female advantages in reading (d = 0.19) and language arts (d = 0.29) were smaller than in writing performance (d = 0.45). The small gender differences in verbal performance increased in a linear pattern from grades 3 to 8 and then remained steady in high school.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Becker, B. J., & Hedges, L. V. (1988). The effects of selection and variability in studies of gender differences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11(02), 183–184.
Boldizar, J. P. (1991). Assessing sex typing and androgyny in children: The Children’s Sex Role Inventory. Developmental Psychology, 27(3), 505–515.
Borenstein, M., Hedges, L., Higgins, J., & Rothstein, H. (2009). Introduction to meta-analysis. West Sussex: Wiley.
Buchman, C., DiPrete, T. A., & McDaniel, A. (2008). Gender inequalities in educational. Annual Review of Sociology, 34(1), 319–337.
Chadband, E. (2012). Nine ways Title IX has helped girls and women in education. neaToday, http://neatoday.org/2012/06/21/nine-ways-title-ix-has-helped-girls-and-women-in-education-2/.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral science (2nd ed.). Hillsdale: Elbaum.
Davies, A. P. C., & Shackelford, T. D. (2006). An evolutionary psychological perspective on gender similarities and differences. American Psychologist, 61(6), 640–641.
Feingold, A. (1988). Cognitive gender differences are disappearing. American Psychologist, 43(2), 95–103.
Feingold, A. (1992). Sex differences in variability in intellectual abilities: a new look at an old controversy. Review of Educational Research, 62(1), 61–84.
Gillespie, A., & Graham, S. (2014). A meta-analysis of writing interventions for students with learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 80(4), 454–473.
Graham, S., McKeown, D., Kiuhara, S., & Harris, K. R. (2012). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for students in the elementary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 879–896.
Halpern, D. F. (1997). Sex differences in intelligence: implications for education. American Psychologist, 52(10), 1091–1102.
Halpern, D. (2012). Sex differences in cognitive ability (4th ed.). New York: Psychology Press.
Hanson, K., Guilfoy, V., & Pillai, S. (2012). More than title IX: how equity in education has shaped the nation. Lanham: Rowans and Littlefield.
Hedges, L. V., & Nowell, A. (1995). Sex differences in mental test scores, variability, and numbers of high-scoring individuals. Science, 269(5220), 41–45.
Herlitz, A., Reuterskiöld, L., Lovén, J., Thilers, P., & Rehnman, J. (2013). Cognitive sex differences are not magnified as a function of age, sex hormones, or puberty development during early adolescence. Developmental Neuropsychology, 38(3), 167–179.
Hyde, J. (2005). Gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(6), 581–592.
Hyde, J. S., & Grabe, S. (2008). Meta-analysis in the psychology of women. In F. Denmark & M. A. Paludi (Eds.), Review of educational research (Vol. 62, pp. 61–84).
Hyde, J., & Linn, M. (1988). Gender differences in verbal ability: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 104(1), 53–69.
Hyde, J. S., Lindberg, S. M., Linn, M. C., Ellis, A. B., & Williams, C. C. (2008). Gender similarities characterize math performance. Science, 321(5888), 494–495.
Katzman, S., & Alliger, G. (1992). Averaging untransformed variance ratios can be misleads: a comment on Feingold. Review of Educational Research, 62(4), 427–428.
Lindberg, S., Hyde, J., Petersen, J., & Linn, M. (2010). New trends in gender and math performance: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136(6), 1123–1135.
Lippa, R. A. (2006). The gender reality hypothesis. American Psychologist, 61(6), 639–640.
Lipsey, M. W., & Wilson, D. B. (2001). Practical meta-analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Loveless, T. (2015). How well are American students learning? Brown Center Report on American Education. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute.
Lynn, R., & Mikk, J. (2009). Sex differences in reading achievement. Trames, 13(1), 3–13.
Malecki, C., & Jewell, J. (2003). Developmental, gender, and practical considerations in scoring curriculum-based measurement writing probes. Psychology in the Schools, 40(4), 379–390.
McGraw, K. O., & Wong, S. P. (1992). A common language effect size statistic. Psychological Bulletin, 111(2), 361–365.
Miller, D., & Halpern, D. (2014). The new science of cognitive sex differences. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(1), 37–45.
National Center for Educational Statistics. (2012). Trends in academic progress. The National Report Card. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/main2012/pdf/2013456.pdf.
National Council of Teachers of English. (n.d.) NCTE/IRA standard for English language arts, http://www.ncte.org.
Newcombe, N., & Dubas, J. S. (1987). Individual differences in cognitive ability: Are they related to timing of puberty? In R. M. Lerner & T. T. Foch (Eds.), Child psychology. Biological-psychosocial interactions in early adolescence (pp. 249-302). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Nowell, A., & Hedges, L. V. (1998). Trends in gender differences in academic achievement from 1960 to 1994: an analysis of differences in mean, variance, and extreme scores. Sex Roles, 39(1/2), 21–43.
Pajares, F., & Valiante, G. (2001). Gender differences in writing motivation and achievement of middle school students: a function of gender orientation? Contemporary Educational Psychology, 26, 266–281.
Reilly, D. (2012). Gender, culture, and sex-typed cognitive abilities. PLoS One, 7(7), e39904.
Reilly, D., Neumann, D. L., & Andrews, G. (2016). Sex and sex-role differences in specific cognitive abilities. Intelligence, 54, 147–158.
Reynolds, M. R., Scheiber, C., Hanjovsky, D. B., Schwartz, B., & Kaufman, A. (2015). Gender differences in academic achievement: is writing an exception to the gender similarities hypothesis? The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 176(4), 211–234.
Robinson, J. P., & Lubienski, S. T. (2011). The development of gender achievement gaps in math and reading during elementary and middle school. American Educational Research Journal, 48(2), 268–302.
Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1982). A simple, general purpose display of magnitude of experimental effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(2), 166–169.
Rosenzweig, E. Q., & Wigfield, A. (2016). STEM motivation interventions for adolescents: a promising start, but further to go. Educational Psychologist, 51(2), 146–163.
Rozek, C., Hyde, J. S., Svoboda, R. C., Hulleman, C., & Harackiewicz, J. (2015). Gender differences in the effect of a utility value intervention to help parents motivate adolescents in mathematics and science. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(1), 195–206.
Scheiber, C., Reynolds, M., Hajovsky, D., & Kaufman, A. (2015). Gender differences in achievement in a large, nationally representative sample of children and adolescents. Psychology in the Schools, 52(4), 335–348.
Stanley, J. C., Benbow, C. P., Brody, L. E., Dauber, S., & Lupkowski, A. (1992). Gender differences on eighty-six nationally standardized aptitude and achievement tests. In Talent development (Vol. 1, pp. 42–65). Unionville: Trillium Press.
Stoet, G., & Geary, D. C. (2013). Sex differences in mathematics and reading achievement are inversely related: within- and across- nation assessment of 10 years of PISA data. PLoS One, 8(3), e57988.
Stoet, G., & Geary, D. C. (2018). The gender equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Psychological Science, 29(4), 581–593.
Stumpf, H. & Stanley, J. (1996). Gender-related differences on the College Board’s Advanced Placement and Achievement tests, 1982–1992. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(2), 353–364.
U.S. Department of Education. (2002). No Child Left Behind Act. https://www2.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml.
U.S. Department of Education. (2015). Every Student Succeeds Act. https://www.ed.gov/esea.
Voyer, D. (2011). Sex differences in dichotic listening. Brain and Cognition, 76(2), 245–255.
Voyer, D., & Doyle, R. (2012). Response format, magnitude of laterality effects, and sex differences in laterality. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 17(3), 259–274.
Voyer, D., & Voyer, S. D. (2014). Gender differences in school achievement: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 1174–1204.
Witt, S. D. (1997). Parental influence on children’s socialization to gender roles. Adolescence, 32(126), 253–259.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic Supplementary Material
ESM 1
(XLSX 58 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Petersen, J. Gender Difference in Verbal Performance: a Meta-analysis of United States State Performance Assessments. Educ Psychol Rev 30, 1269–1281 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9450-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9450-x