Cross-Country Variation in (Binary) Gender Differences in Secondary School Students’ CS Attitudes: Re-Validating and Generalizing a CS Attitudes Scale

Abstract

The current study compared American, Korean, and Indonesian middle and high school students’ CS attitudes. Concurrently, this study also examined whether the items in the CS attitudes scale exhibit country and gender measurement biases. We gathered data on CS attitudes from middle and high school students in the US, Korea, and Indonesia. The participating students took the same (translated) previously validated CS attitudes scale. We ran a unidimensional IRT, differential item functioning (DIF), a two-way ANOVA, and the Kruskal-Wallis H test. Despite the valid instrument, we found it inappropriate as is for international comparison studies because students from different countries interpreted some items differently. We then compared gender-based differences in CS attitudes across countries. The results revealed no significant differences between males and females in the Indonesian middle school data, whereas male students had significantly higher CS attitudes than female students in both American and Korean student data. Furthermore, we found the same pattern in gender differences in Korean and Indonesian high school students’ CS attitudes scores as in the middle school study. These findings underscore the importance of a country’s sociocultural context in influencing gap and diversity in secondary school students’ CS attitudes.