Course talk:PSYC305/2013ST2/ClassProject/2.1 Introduction - History

This will be the first part of the introduction. This page will give a broad overview of the history of measuring gender as a personality trait. Any reference to Gender Diagnosticity should be left out here (as it will be included in the next section).

I must say I really like the first paragraph. I wonder if we could say something linking it to the second paragraph, because the change of subject seems a bit abrupt.

Hey Jaimie,

As I mentioned in the other thread, do you think it would be useful to move the definition of gender and sex into paragraph 1 of this thread because even the beginning of this paragraph seems a little abrupt by immediately talking about measuring gender without defining it.

Hi Gordon - what you say makes sense to me. What do other people think?

Hi Gordon, I agree with you in that the change in subjects is abrupt. I think moving the definition of gender and sex into paragraph 1 is a great idea!

Thanks Jaimie and Charly, I've removed the "Gender" portion from "2.3" into "2.1" and am editing it as well as adding a bit more on the History.

Kind of got stuck on editing that first and second paragraph for a long time, but I think I've smoothed it out.

I was researching a bit more about the differences in traits across cultures and came across an article which states that although women usually score higher in neuroticism there is one facet of neuroticism in which women do not always score higher than men, and it is anger and angry hostility.

Apart from that, I also read that women score higher on some facets of conscientiousness like order, dutifulness, and self-discipline, these differences are not consistent across cultures. I'll just go ahed and add that information in the 'Gender differences in personality traits across cultures' subsection, and whoever feels that it is not important can delete or edit it.

I think this section is looking really good. A couple of things 1) it would be great to be relying on Smiler and Epstein less (see discussion below). 2) "they reveal that there are significant group differences for three (SPC, RE, RABBM) of the masculinity areas)" - this could be explained a bit more. Differences between which groups? Gender groups?

Hi Jaimie,

I added this to the end of the paragraph: "This means that each of the four groups of men (androgynous, feminine, masculine, and undifferentiated) exhibit differences in their idea of what a restrictive, masculine gender role entails. Consequently, each group experiences gender conflict differently, which was illustrated by the group differences in SPC, RE, and RABBM."

I hope that clarifies that!

In this paragraph describing the BSRI, the part "impossible to be high on one scale and low on another" I think could be explained further and put into a sentence of its own. (As it is, it seems too much to have in one sentence). Also when talking about the BSRI we should mention what the questions seem to be measuring - instrumentality and expressiveness. Finally, in the last sentence, are you talking about as romantic partners? Otherwise, the paragraph is shaping up nicely.

I've added a bit from another section here which may need a bit more work to describe the context.

Hi Jaimie, I included the items that you had brought from another section within the paragraph, I wasn't sure if you had intended for them to be separate or combined so I left them in both and I can keep whichever one works better.

I think they could be integrated into the paragraph. Thanks!

Hi all, in this paragraph it says "Results show a moderate correlation in each category" what is the correlation between? Is it SRBS and gender?

I think we could put more information in here about what the questions in this scale are asking (e.g. are they attitudes, interests, hobbies?).

In the second paragraph, I'm not sure what is meant by "impossible to be high on one scale and low on another". Perhaps this can be clarified?

Hi Everyone,

I have started this introduction section by reading the Smiler and Epstein paper. I have written up the measures in the subsection on trait measures for the first construct (support and adherence to cultural gender norms). However, the remaining measures in the subsections on ideology measures, the gender behaviour measures, and the gender socialization measures still need to be mentioned for this first construct. Furthermore, I summarized the second construct (gender role conflict and stress). Finally, the entire third construct (relative position of men and women in society) still needs to be addressed.

Carli

May I move your summary and incorporated into the last section of introduction?

I feel like if we have summary for each page of the introduction section, it might become repetitive.

and do you think it might be proper to mention the article by Lippa, Richard and Connelly, Sharon since we are attempting to replicate their findings?

I think this section is just supposed to be a broad overview of the history of measuring gender to give the reader a starting point for our project. I think specifics of previous gender diagnosticity should go later in the introduction.

I also agree that it is little too detailed for the purpose of our report and for this section.

so how about writing an overview. Just mentioning the theories by different researchers.

maybe starting from(I'm referring to the textbook) the theory where masculinity and femininity was measured as a single personality dimension.

And then the development of the concept of androgyny, (completely separating into two independence dimensions)

and then different theories which came about after realizing that masculinity and femininity are not completely separate

and then leading to the development of Gender Diagnosticity(Lippa,1990) which we are replicating.

Textbook seem to condensed and comprehensive overview in chapter 6, under "The Search for Androgyny"

I think that looks good but the part about actually mentioning gender diagnosticity should be saved for the next section of the introduction.

I agree that this may be too detailed. However, the Smiler & Epstein paper is quite extensive in explaining the measures they reviewed, and it was quite difficult interpreting each measure. I attempted to summarize the measures by providing context on what they measure as well as what findings they have achieved in the past. If I didn't mention these aspects of the measures then I was afraid of it being too generic and not informative. For example, if I had just said that Smiler & Epstein measure the construct of "support and adherence to cultural gender norms" by using trait measures, then this provides no background information on what trait measures are and what the outcomes of these measures were. With that said, I can see how the length of this section might become too long if we mention all of the measures.

I added the summary component (which briefly touched on gender diagnosticity) as a way to transition to the next part of the introduction - the gender diagnosticity section. However, I am definitely open to it being moved to the end of the introduction as a way of concluding the intro :)

Also, with regards to your comment about the Lippa et al. paper, I personally think it would be best to mention it in the next part of the intro (the gender diagnosticity section) instead of this section.

I personally think a version of the summary that was written could make a nice final to the introduction so we can also lighten this first section. However, if everyone else thinks it should stay that I am also fine with that.

Hi all, I think this is a good start. It seems to be relying a lot on the Smiler article. To get more of a range we could search for more sources and look up the original articles that Smiler cites and reference them.

I was just looking through the Smiler article and since we are mentioning the articles he cited won't we have to add references for all of the original articles?

It would be preferable if you can access the original articles, look at them, give your own interpretation of what they say, and cite them.

And of course be on the lookout for other references that Smiler might have missed.

Thanks for your help Jaimie and I will go about looking through the originals. It also seems that everyone is in agreement to incorporate the summary into the final part of the introduction so I am going to do that.

Is everyone okay if I look for the original articles and as Jaimie suggested rework it a bit to use our own interpretations?

That sounds good to me! If there's any you can't find you could let us know and someone on here might be able to locate it.

Hi guys, as I was finishing reading through the original articles that Smiler mentioned many of the studies measured gender but not necessarily as a personality trait. Some looked at socialization and beliefs about gender roles and gender role strain. Do we still include studies that don't completely match up with measuring gender as a personality trait?

Yes, you're right, we don't want to make it too broad, but what you've done here seems quite contained and relevant to the topic, so no, I don't think we should remove it.

I'd like to start on this section by asking what is our hypothesis?

The resulting set of questionnaires will be reliable and valid in measuring gender-related personality.

Is this any close?

this is an article i am currently reading to help with this section:

Gender diagnosticity: A new Bayesian approach to gender-related individual differences.

it is available online.

Hi there! I don't think this is going to be a traditional "hypothesis testing" research, but we could make some predictions about what we might find (e.g. we expect hobby, occupation, and activity preferences to differentiate men and women the best based on previous findings). That is quite specific to this study though, so it would go in the last part of the introduction. This first part would be a more broad overview of the topic.

I'd suggest the Smiler article would be a good place to start with this.

This will be the first part of the introduction. This page will give a broad overview of the history of measuring gender as a personality trait. Any reference to Gender Diagnosticity should be left out here (as it will be included in the next section).

I would suggest using the "Measuring Gender: Options and Issues" article as a good starting point for this.