Tags: study habits

The Difference Blog

Homework

Time spent on homework, according to Hofferth et al (2001) has "substantial variation by age": as children get older, they tend to have greater workloads. Hofferth et al found that "girls read less per week than boys, but, with age, their reading time increased relative to that of boys," but this included both reading for pleasure and homework reading.

In the current issue of Perspectives on Labour and Income by Statistics Canada, Katherine Marshall (2007) discusses the results of a recent survey of Canadian teens: girls did 10.3 hours of homework per week, on average, compared to 8.1 hours for boys. Marshall says this is consistent with results in most industrialized countries. For example, Statistics Netherlands reported about 1.75 hours daily for girls, versus about 1.50 hours daily for boys, according to CBS Netherlands (2001).


I did very little homework as a kid, or in college. I was one of those really annoying kids who did the bare minimum and still did decently well, although I was hardly valedictorian material. Oh, wait, I still am. My study habits have improved slightly with age, but I suspect that's more related to the fact that I pay for my own education now, so I'm more determined to get value out of it. However, I have learned in my night courses that if I need to miss a class and want to get notes from someone, I ought to ask a woman, and the older, the better. When I've attended study sessions, the gender balance is far more female-skewed than the classes themselves.
The Difference Blog

We were only freshmen

Noel-Levitz higher education consultants (2007) surveyed nearly 100,000 college freshmen in 2006, and found some interesting gender differences in their responses. Men tended to be more confident about their ability, but women tended to report better study habits. The Noel-Levitz report states that only 73 men graduate college for every 100 women who do. Diprete and Buchmann (2006) suggest that the benefits of a college education have also increased more for women than for men over the past forty years. However, Tanaguchi and Kaufman (2005) unsurprisingly found that being divorced and having young children made completing a degree less likely for "non-traditional college students" (entering college years after high school) of both genders, although they note that these conditions more traditionally affect women.


The last time I got angry enough to physically attack someone, I was 16, and a college freshman. One of the guys from my dorm saw that he was getting under my skin, and wanted to see how far he could push. He suggested that the only reason women entered college was to get the "Mrs." degree, and (being young, dumb, and unrealistic) I attempted to clock him with a dumbbell. Even fourteen years later, I have a hard time thinking dispassionately about the topic.