Gender Differences in Learning the SPSS-Software

In the literature it is often assumed that females are at a disadvantage when working with the computer. Whereas differences could be found in attitudes towards computers (Whitley, 1997) there are only few studies examining performance. As gender per se can not explain performance differences, we used the cognitive-motivational process model (Vollmeyer & Rheinberg, 1999, 2000) to find possible explaining variables. The model assumes that initial motivation affects strategies and motivation during learning which then influence performance. Therefore, we had male and female students solve four statistics tasks with the help of the SPSS-Software, which was an unknown program for them. Although males and females did not differ in initial motivation, male students were able to solve more statistical tasks than female students. Motivation and flow-experience could be identified as mediating variables.