Gender Differences in Caribbean Students' Performance on a Test of Errors in Biological Labelling

Abstract

The extent to which there were gender differences in the performance of some form 5 (grade 11) students on a test of six categories of biological labelling errors was investigated. The study sample of 1216 Caribbean students (525 girls and 691 boys, mean age = 16#lb50 years) was randomly selected from 32 high schools from Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Trinidad. An Errors in Biological Labelling Test developed by the author was used for data collection. The results showed that both the boys' and the girls' performance levels were low on the six categories of errors (except on labels without guidelines). However, the girls performed significantly better on each category of error than the boys. The implications of the findings are highlighted.