GENDER DIFFERENCES IN STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS ECONOMETRICS

Resumen

Attitudes are an integral part of the learning process of any discipline since they are a key element for the acquisition of content and skills. The educational literature has remarked that negative attitudes towards a subject hinder its learning, as well as the future use of what has been learned. In this sense, it has been argued that the development of positive attitudes should be a desired outcome in the learning process of every subject since it will improve learning, performance, the desire to deepen the study of the subject, and the probability of using what has been learned appropriately in the future. This is especially important to take into account when teaching subjects that, traditionally, are not usually liked by students, because they consider them complex or because they do not appreciate their value. This is the case with econometrics. Students do not usually like this subject. On the other hand, in the labor market, knowledge and skills related to econometrics, and data analysis in general, are increasingly in demand. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the attitudes of students towards econometrics, how they change throughout the course, and what factors influence them in order to subsequently be able to establish educational strategies that allow econometrics courses to serve to improve them. In the literature, there is a great void of works that analyze these issues in the field of econometrics.This study aims to fill this gap by examining students' attitudes toward Econometrics and their relationship with gender. Literature on educational gender differences reveals that some gender inequalities have been overcome in recent decades. However, some differences persist. Gender differences in preferences for particular subjects are observed in a number of research works. Previous studies show that women's preference for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects is lower than for men. Although the few works in the area of econometrics and many studies in the related area of statistics have provided some evidence of the existence of significant differences in attitudes by gender, it is not conclusive with studies reporting better attitudes either for men or women depending on the attitudinal dimensions (Cladera, 2021; Valenzuela-Ocana & Miranda-Valenzuela, 2021).The present work tries to contribute to the, until now scarce, study of the differences in attitudes towards econometrics in men and women. The study uses data from a survey conducted among undergraduate students of Economics at the University of Balearic Islands and the University of Oviedo in Spain. The survey was administered at the beginning and end of the semester to capture changes in students' attitudes over time. The information retrieved from the survey allows us to obtain detailed information on the students’ attitudes toward econometrics, and the differences in these attitudes between men and women. The results obtained allow proposing improvements and teaching innovations consistent with the findings obtained.