ADOLESCENT FEMALES\u27 SELF-SCHEMAS FOR GENDER, EXPECTANCY OF SUCCESS, ACHIEVEMENT LEVEL, AND ACHIEVEMENT ATTRIBUTIONS IN A MASCULINE DOMAIN

This study investigated relationships among self-schemas for gender, expectancy of success, achievement level, and achievement attributions of adolescent females in the masculine domain of mathematics. The short form of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire, an expectancy of success scale, and the Mathematics Attribution Scale were completed by 299 tenth and eleventh grade female students in a New York City high school. Mathematics achievement scores from the Stanford Test of Academic Skills were obtained from school records. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that the most important findings in terms of percentage of variance explained were for expectancy of success, and for the attribution of success and failure to ability, and the attribution of failure to task difficulty. Expectancy of success was predicted by mathematics achievement and the self-schema for masculinity. The attribution of success to ability was predicted by expectancy of success, the self-schema for masculinity, and mathematics achievement; the attribution of failure to ability was predicted by expectancy of success; and the attribution of failure to task difficulty was predicted by expectancy of success and the self-schema for androgyny. The findings that the self-schema for masculinity predicted both expectancy of success and the attribution of success to ability was discussed in terms of the importance of congruence between the schema and the masculine sex-typing of mathematics as a domain. While prior research has often found that females are more likely than males to attribute achievement outcomes to luck, this study found that specific groups of females were more likely to use the luck-environment attribution. Since the females in this study were not found to be a homogeneous group in expectancy of success or in achievement attributions, it was suggested that differences in self-schemas for gender, expectancy of success, and achievement level might be investigated as possible explanations for some of the sex differences that have been found in prior research on achievement attributions