Gender Wording, Sex, and Response to Items on Achievement Value

Research on the effects of question-wording in survey research has shown that response patterns are affected by minor changes in wording. A special case of wording effects on perception and response occurs in sex-role research where evidence indicates that generic “man” is perceived as gender “man.” Contrary to these findings, a 1977 experiment with 437 college students responding to items from Rosen and Strodtbeck's scale for achievement value showed that variation in gender-wording had little effect on response patterns.