Examining the Effects of Gender in Oral Interviews

Mi-Jin Joo (주미진); Minhee Bang (방민희)

Examining the Effects of Gender in Oral Interviews

Modern English Education
Abbr : MEESO
2016, 17(1), pp.117-133
Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching
Published : February 28, 2016

Mi-Jin Joo ¹, Minhee Bang ²

¹강원대학교
²상명대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In response to growing interest in identifying the factors which are irrelevant to the ability being measured in oral interviews, this study aimed to explore the gender effect of the people involved in the interviews including raters, test-takers, and interviewers. Gender has been seen as one of the factors which affect test performances in spoken interactions during the interviews. 19 Korean university students (seven females and 12 males) were interviewed, once by a male and once by a female. All interviews were videotaped and scored by 17 raters (10 females and seven males). The scores were analyzed using the multi-faceted Rash measurement. The findings from the analysis were as follows. First, the male raters were more lenient in scoring than the female raters. Secondly, there was no significant variation in test-taker performances although the male test-takers performed better than the female test-takers. Thirdly, the male raters were significantly biased against the female test-takers. They consistently scored the female test-takers more leniently. Lastly, test performances were not meaningfully affected by whether their interviewer was of the same or opposite gender.

KEYWORDS

gender effect, oral interview, rater, bias

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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