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Weird choice of vocabulary to study - fabric and fashion words stressed for women, and techno-babble for men. Was the vocabulary completely random, or was this

Weird choice of vocabulary to study - fabric and fashion words stressed for women, and techno-babble for men. Was the vocabulary completely random, or was this result forced by anticipating the outcome?

function_seven 5y ago
Random. The results shown here are the words with the largest disparity between the sexes. The total list was almost 62,000 words. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  Thanks for the link. Here's a little bit of detail about their sample gathering, which I found interesting: The test was made available on a dedicated website (http://vocabulary.ugent.be/ http://vocabulary.ugent.be/). Access to the test was unlimited. Participants were asked whether English was their native language, what their age and gender were, which country they came from, and their level of education. For the present purposes, we limited the analyses to the first three tests taken by native speakers of English from the USA and the UK.Footnote 1 All in all, we analyzed the data of 221,268 individuals who completed 265,346 sessions. Of these, 56% were completed by female participants and 44% by male participants. The site encourages participation with a hook similar to that used by many online quizzes: Word test How many English words do you know? With this test you get a valid estimate of your English vocabulary size within 4 minutes and you help scientific research. Is this a representative sample? I doubt it. Probably it went viral in some specific communities. Maybe there's still something interesting to learn from it... but I'd take it with a grain of neodymium.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
onion2k 5y ago
The "male" words aren't technobabble though. They're just scientific language. The data certainly seems to very clearly represent the impact of the historical bias in education, entertainment, and the world in general to emphasise "science" as a pursuit for males and "craft" as a pursuit for girls.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > historical bias How historical are you going back here? I'm almost 50 years old and as far back as I can remember, everybody with any authority was working non-stop to teach science to girls and crafts to guys - even to the point of rejecting guys from science classes.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that in most of my science classes (biochemistry/biology), outside of advanced grad-level organic synthesis, which then had a "fighter pilot jock"-vibe, the gender ratio was 50/50 if not more female than male, so this trend goes back 20+ years. But if you look at the list, the scientific terms skew physics, and for... cultural reasons, I suspect the non-specialist penetration of a lot of those terms probably skews male.
    - djur 5y ago
      Exactly. Many respondents who know "parsec" don't know it because they're astronomers, they know it because the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than twelve of 'em.
      - commandlinefan 5y ago
        > the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than twelve of 'em That's a good point - I wonder if the question was "do you recognize this word?" or "can you correctly define this word?" (followed by a quick check)
        djur 5y ago
        This study uses self-reported recognition of the word. Later in the study they compare their results to other tests that try to identify understanding of the words' meaning. I also wonder if there's any gender differential between male and female respondents in willingness to say they "know" a word that sounds vaguely familiar... and if the sound of a word also affects people's willingness to take a leap. The study doesn't seem to have included fake words or anything like that to catch guessers out (and I don't think that was relevant to what they were trying to determine, anyway). I wouldn't be surprised to learn that male respondents are more likely to take a leap for "piezoelectricity" or "thermistor" than they would be for "peplum" and "chignon".
seanicus 5y ago
Plenty of female otaku/anime fans out there but anecdotally I'd say that it's still primarily male. Nowhere near as male as it was in the 90's/00's, though.
- not2b 5y ago
  My daughter is a huge anime fan but yes, still primarily male.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    My daughter is a huge anime fan, but she's not watching the anime where the yakuza defend their bushido with katanas.
    - burnished 5y ago
      oh is she watching the one where the katanas defend the yakuza from bushido? its really good
    - dnautics 5y ago
      I take it she's also not watching the ones where the space robots jump into the air at azimuth 90, disengage their ailerons to get out of the atmosphere, then travel several parsecs in an femtosecond with their boson drive?
- edflsafoiewq 5y ago
  Amusingly I only knew "freesia" because its the title of a manga.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Also the name of a Gundam theme song. (Japan likes using a lot of flower references which they think give a classy Western literature feeling but which we’ve never heard of.)
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Weird choice of vocabulary to study I think you're confused. These are not words they chose to study - these are the words with the largest difference in recognition, from a larger corpus of words. You're projecting some kind of pre-bias onto the researchers that I don't think is there.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Perhaps you're right. I read their methodology and it seems fair. They did solicit demographic info from the participants, but didn't mention if before or after word testing. There's still wiggle room there for bias, but probably not.

function_seven 5y ago

Random. The results shown here are the words with the largest disparity between the sexes. The total list was almost 62,000 words. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9

JeremyNT 5y ago
Thanks for the link. Here's a little bit of detail about their sample gathering, which I found interesting: The test was made available on a dedicated website (http://vocabulary.ugent.be/ http://vocabulary.ugent.be/). Access to the test was unlimited. Participants were asked whether English was their native language, what their age and gender were, which country they came from, and their level of education. For the present purposes, we limited the analyses to the first three tests taken by native speakers of English from the USA and the UK.Footnote 1 All in all, we analyzed the data of 221,268 individuals who completed 265,346 sessions. Of these, 56% were completed by female participants and 44% by male participants. The site encourages participation with a hook similar to that used by many online quizzes: Word test How many English words do you know? With this test you get a valid estimate of your English vocabulary size within 4 minutes and you help scientific research. Is this a representative sample? I doubt it. Probably it went viral in some specific communities. Maybe there's still something interesting to learn from it... but I'd take it with a grain of neodymium.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

onion2k 5y ago

The "male" words aren't technobabble though. They're just scientific language. The data certainly seems to very clearly represent the impact of the historical bias in education, entertainment, and the world in general to emphasise "science" as a pursuit for males and "craft" as a pursuit for girls.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> historical bias How historical are you going back here? I'm almost 50 years old and as far back as I can remember, everybody with any authority was working non-stop to teach science to girls and crafts to guys - even to the point of rejecting guys from science classes.
- dnautics 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that in most of my science classes (biochemistry/biology), outside of advanced grad-level organic synthesis, which then had a "fighter pilot jock"-vibe, the gender ratio was 50/50 if not more female than male, so this trend goes back 20+ years. But if you look at the list, the scientific terms skew physics, and for... cultural reasons, I suspect the non-specialist penetration of a lot of those terms probably skews male.
  - djur 5y ago
    Exactly. Many respondents who know "parsec" don't know it because they're astronomers, they know it because the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than twelve of 'em.
    - commandlinefan 5y ago
      > the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than twelve of 'em That's a good point - I wonder if the question was "do you recognize this word?" or "can you correctly define this word?" (followed by a quick check)
      - djur 5y ago
        This study uses self-reported recognition of the word. Later in the study they compare their results to other tests that try to identify understanding of the words' meaning. I also wonder if there's any gender differential between male and female respondents in willingness to say they "know" a word that sounds vaguely familiar... and if the sound of a word also affects people's willingness to take a leap. The study doesn't seem to have included fake words or anything like that to catch guessers out (and I don't think that was relevant to what they were trying to determine, anyway). I wouldn't be surprised to learn that male respondents are more likely to take a leap for "piezoelectricity" or "thermistor" than they would be for "peplum" and "chignon".

seanicus 5y ago

Plenty of female otaku/anime fans out there but anecdotally I'd say that it's still primarily male. Nowhere near as male as it was in the 90's/00's, though.

not2b 5y ago
My daughter is a huge anime fan but yes, still primarily male.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  My daughter is a huge anime fan, but she's not watching the anime where the yakuza defend their bushido with katanas.
  - burnished 5y ago
    oh is she watching the one where the katanas defend the yakuza from bushido? its really good
  - dnautics 5y ago
    I take it she's also not watching the ones where the space robots jump into the air at azimuth 90, disengage their ailerons to get out of the atmosphere, then travel several parsecs in an femtosecond with their boson drive?
edflsafoiewq 5y ago
Amusingly I only knew "freesia" because its the title of a manga.
- astrange 5y ago
  Also the name of a Gundam theme song. (Japan likes using a lot of flower references which they think give a classy Western literature feeling but which we’ve never heard of.)

chrisseaton 5y ago

> Weird choice of vocabulary to study I think you're confused. These are not words they chose to study - these are the words with the largest difference in recognition, from a larger corpus of words. You're projecting some kind of pre-bias onto the researchers that I don't think is there.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Perhaps you're right. I read their methodology and it seems fair. They did solicit demographic info from the participants, but didn't mention if before or after word testing. There's still wiggle room there for bias, but probably not.