

 Studying the science gender gap at the high school level - araneae
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/11/study-shows-girls-find-high-school-science-to-be-ho-hum.ars

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Kliment
Fairly flat when it comes to details. There have been a number of studies in
this direction showing similar results. This one appears to use experience
sampling, which I personally have a problem with, since being interrupted and
having to answer a set of questions tends to work pretty badly. When I was
trying out a similar response system, I got frustrated after the second time
it happened and spent as little effort as possible on the questions after
that. One experience sampling study that I saw (run in Italy in the form of a
mobile phone application administering a questionnaire back in 2006, meant to
measure flow) took almost 10 minutes to fill in and had lots of free text
questions requiring reflection on personal goals and evaluation of other
people's effects on the subject (it's no longer politically correct to say
"subject" in psychology, make that "participant"). It did an excellent job at
breaking whatever "flow" the subject might have been experiencing. It would
pop up at various times during the day and bother users until they filled it
in. I wonder how much of a distraction the pagers were in those classes.

