Cross-national gender differences in complex problem solving and their determinants

a r t i c l e i n f o The present study examined cross-national gender differences in domain-general complex problem solving (CPS) and their determinants. A CPS test relying on the MicroDYN approach was applied to a sample of 890 Hungarian and German high school students attending 8th to 11th grade. Results based on multi-group confirmatory factor analyses showed that measurement invariance of CPS was found across gender and nationality. Analyses of latent mean differences revealed that males outperformed females and German students outperformed Hungarian students. However, these results were caused by Hungarian females performing worse than all other groups. Further analyses of logfiles capturing process data of the interaction of participants with the task showed that Hungarian females less often used vary-one-thing-at-a-time strategy, which lead to considerably worse knowledge acquisition. Results imply that analyzing process data such as use of strategies is highly advisable to identify determinants of overall performance differences in CPS across groups of interest. Over the last decades, reports on individual differences in students' performance across gender or nationality have strongly influenced educational policies. For instance, results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 led to changes of the educational system and revisions of educational standards in Germany (Wernstedt & John-Ohnesorg, 2009), because German students underperformed in comparison to neighboring countries. Especially performance differences in domain-specific areas such as mathematical ability play an important role not only in However, only little is known about individual differences in students' domain-general competencies notwithstanding an increasing scientific and public interest. For instance, domain-general problem solving competency was assessed in the 2012 cycle of PISA, which was conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with results scheduled for publication in 2014. More specifically, the OECD emphasizes the high educational and socio-economical relevance of domain-general problem solving in everyday life as it " provides a basis for future learning " (OECD, 2010, p. 7). Thus, domain-general problem solving is considered a highly relevant competency for students that should be developed in addition to domain-specific knowledge in school subjects. Within domain-general problem solving, (non-interactive) analytical problem solving and (interactive) complex problem solving (CPS) can be distinguished as Whereas analytical problem solving is usually measured with static paper–pencil tasks, complex problem solving (CPS) 1 includes tasks enabling interactions between user and task situation (Wirth & Klieme, 2003). Recently, the OECD emphasized the importance of the domain-general …