دانلود رایگان مقاله جنسیت و نگرش نسبت به استفاده از فناوری

Abstract

Gender difference in the attitude toward technology use has long been a concern in education. The last meta-analysis on this issue covered the empirical studies up to about 20 years ago. Since then, technology use has increased exponentially, and many more empirical studies have examined this issue, but showed inconsistent findings. As a result, there is a lack of clear understanding about if such gender difference still persists. The purpose of this research is to re-examine this issue by meta-analyzing the empirical research studies on this issue in the last two decades, and to examine the potential moderators that may have contributed to the heterogeneity of the research findings. A total of 50 articles from 1997 to 2014 were identified and used in this meta-analysis. The findings indicated that males still hold more favorable attitudes toward technology use than females, but such different would be characterized as small effect sizes. The comparison between this study and the last meta-analysis of about two decades ago suggested that there was only minimal reduction in the gender attitudinal gap in general. But when the general attitude was broken down to different dimensions of attitude, the present study showed a reduction of gender difference in the dimension of Affect and Self-efficacy, but not in the dimension of Belief. The limitations of the study were noted, and the implications and future research directions were discussed.

4. Conclusions

This meta-analysis study quantitatively summarized prior empirical studies on gender differences in attitudes toward technology use over about seventeen years. Several findings stood out. First, in general, males showed more favorable attitude toward technology use than females, especially on the dimensions of belief (e.g., believing in the societal usefulness of technology) and self-efficacy (e.g., self-confidence in one's ability to learn and use technology effectively). These findings indicated that, in general, women showed lower level of attitude toward technology use than their male counterparts, and these findings were confirmed by many recent studies (Ardies et al., 2015; Ong & Lai, 2006; Sainz
& Lopez-S
aez, 2010; Yau
& Cheng, 2012). However, it should be pointed out that, although women may have shown slightly lower levels of attitudes than men, their attitudes toward technology use were still positive, not negative. However, compared with previous meta-analysis studies, in general, the gender attitudinal gap showed very small reduction. But there was a noticeable reduction in gender gap with regard to self-efficacy, which is regarded as an important attitudinal dimension with implications for a person's choice, effort, and persistence.