Gender Related Statistical Correlations of Computer

Science Students

(or Curious Case of Novi Sad Students)

Zoran Putnik, Ivana Štajner-Papuga,

Zoran Budimac, Mirjana Ivanović

Agenda

• Hard and cold facts

• Soft and clever conclusions

• Resume

Survey• Conducted in 4 countries:

– FYR of Macedonia– Bosnia and Herzegovina– Albania, and– Serbia, Novi Sad, 2 faculties

• Tri principal parts:– General data– Motivation for enrollment– Ambitions regarding future career

• About 130 questions and options to choose from.

Survey use• Over the years, we conducted the same survey (in

various countries, with varying number of students) on several occasions.

• We even reported about that at project workshops.

• Yet – each time we used “only” common sense estimates and logically clear results.

• Without employing (enough) statistical knowledge, methods, and tools, we were not able to claim definite outcomes, or recognize doubtful results!

Survey processing• You might notice Ivana - a new and unknown

name among authors

• Our friend (Even though she’s a mathematician. We forgive her. She’s still young!), teaching statistics at our Department.

• The data processing was performed using the programming package "Statistic“. More about that later.

Some statistics• Please don’t ask me what these things mean,

that’s why we had Ivana :

– Since observed variables are not normally distributed, we used non-parametric, Mann-Whitney U test, and its’ extension, Kruskal-Wallis test;

– When needed and/or interesting, we applied other types of statistical analysis (Chi-square test, for example), and also on occasion we gave some basic descriptive statistics.

Some statistics

• Our aim was to see if there exists a statistically significant difference between the answers:

– either of the members of two genders, or

– between the members of different countries.

• As usual, the threshold for statistically significant difference of 0.05 was selected.

Hard cold facts

• The first table shows number of

participants by countries and by gender:

Hard cold facts• Our research showed not only that the opinions

are different, but that this difference is sometimes very large (and strange, sometimes).

– As we will present difference is visible between students from Novi Sad, Serbia and other countries …

– Particularly with male population from Novi Sad, who had often views quite dissimilar than the “rest of the world” we surveyed.

Agenda

• Hard and cold facts

• Soft and clever conclusions

• Resume

Cruel introduction• We can start by presenting the most appalling result.

Question was “Do you think studies positively influence your intellectual development?”

– While we actually considered this a rhetorical question, results are almost shocking for male students from Novi Sad.

– Frequencies for answers were entered into a 2x2 table, we evaluated the relationship between two dichotomous variables, and applied Chi-square test.

Cruel introduction• Of course, the null hypothesis was that the variables are

independent, i.e. that opinion about the intellectual development does not depend on the gender of the respondent.

• Yet, to our surprise:

Cruel introduction• While with such results, the difference is visible even with

the naked eye, this time we have statistics to prove it.

• With the available data registered p-value was 0.0013 (far less than the given level of significance of α=0.05), so based on sample information, there is a reason to discard null hypothesis.

• Consequently we can conclude that male respondents have a different opinion.

Moving on – favorite courses

• We asked our students about their liking of groups of courses, namely:– computer science courses,

– mathematical courses, and

– courses of general nature.

• Null hypothesis was that there is no significant difference in opinions of males and females.

Moving on – favorite courses

• Just to scare you let me show you

the resulting table:

• Where to look? Here

Favorite courses – the rest of the world

• The same table for other three countries:

• All in all, the only difference exists in opinions of male gender about the mathematical group of courses.

• Everyone likes/dislikes everything just the same, except this.

Moving on a little faster• Not wanting to leave their male colleagues

lonely – with the next set of questions female students from Novi Sad joined the party:

– The question was: “Do you feel worried about your future career in the field of CS?”

– What to expect here – we were not sure, but we definitely did not expect such a different results between countries!

Future career in the field

• Answers were very different between Novi

Sad and the rest of the world:

Future career in the field• In a case you don’t see the difference completely clear

(like I didn’t) here are the “numerical” results, showing double difference:– Null hypothesis: variables are independent, i.e. opinion about

future career does not depend on gender of the respondent; • In the case of Novi Sad: TRUE;• In case of other countries: FALSE – females are more worried

– Null hypothesis: there is no difference between Novi Sad and other countries:

• FALSE – students from Novi Sad are less concerned about their future career, than their colleagues from other Balkan countries.

Communication• The next pair of questions was about satisfaction with

the communication during studies.

– The first question inquired about the communication with the “human staff”, i.e. with professors and assistants at their institution.

– The second question was about satisfaction with the application of eLearning facilities, which we can consider as sort of “communication with the electronic staff”.

Communication• Without bothering you with the tables and numbers, we’ll just

present final results and conclusions.– For Novi Sad students, gender is a significant factor while

grading relationship with the staff.

– Females from Novi Sad gave higher grades to the communication with their lecturers than males did.

– Grade of application of eLearning in Novi Sad is also significantly different depending on gender. Again, females graded eLearning facilities higher than male students.

Communication

• We repeated the same tests with the data we collected for students outside of Novi Sad.

– There is no significant difference in the opinion about communication with lecturers, when gender is concerned.

– There is no significant difference in the opinion about eLearning, when gender is concerned.

Communication• We reorganized the data for Novi Sad students to see if there is

the difference in opinion about communication with the regular “live” staff, and “electronic staff”.

• After applying Pearson Chi-square Non-parametric test of independence, the obtained p-value says – students are usually either satisfied or dissatisfied with both, female or male.

Preparation for the future

• The next question was about “how well your studies prepared you for the future”.– Students from Novi Sad had different opinion

even on this question (where we were sure they would answer the same).

– Yet, this time, at least gender had no influence, i.e. both genders from Novi Sad had the same opinion on this issue, very different than others.

Preparation for the future• “How do you feel about the possibilities for

their future career in the field of computer science?”– Novi Sad females were more negative and have

more pessimistic opinion than other females.– Novi Sad males were even more negative.

– This intrigued us to check on one thing, which proved true – females are always more optimistic than males within their countries

Agenda

• Hard and cold facts

• Soft and clever conclusions

• Resume

Summary A

• On several very important questions, students from Novi Sad had quite different opinions than students from other countries.

• With these questions, differences between genders were relatively trivial.

•

Summary B• There is also a considerable number of questions,

where only Novi Sad male students have different opinion than the rest of the world.

• On those questions, females from Novi Sad fit into the opinion of others,

• … while male students have sometimes very unique and distinctive attitudes.

Thank you for your attention!

Questions?