Throughout our findings, we have discovered that women tend to excel in certain aspects, primarily due to outside factors such as additional study time, extra educational support, and school presence. This has caused us to question the cultural impact of women’s academic performance. However, we are missing societal contexts that exist in Portugal. Without this information, we are unable to fully connect the data we are given with the constructs and culture that are present in Portugal. The correlations we have discovered have enabled us to pose this question and explore its potential impact.
We performed quantitative research by investigating the correlation in the dataset we were provided with. We were given factors such as: school, sex, age, address, family size, parents' cohabitation status, mother’s education, father’s education, mother’s job, and father’s job, reason, guardian, traveltime, study time, number of failures, school support, family educational support, paid classes, activities, nursery school, high education, romantic relationships, family relationships, free time, social life, alcohol consumption, health, and absences. With this given information, we were able to draw conclusions with the statistics that were provided with these factors. We also used qualitative research skills by observing the introduction to the dataset and discussing the importance of correlating student performance in Portugal. From there, we were able to draw our conclusions through questioning cultural impacts and societal stereotypes on student performance.
Through the process of investigating potential correlations with the dataset we were given, we observed correlations between multiple factors that could impact our initial question, “Are women more likely to be expected to be involved in school involvement and/or perfectionism, while it is more acceptable for men to work less hard in school?” We found a correlation between study rates, it is shown that women tend to study more, our findings back this, 45.5% of males spend less than an hour studying whereas 23.1% of women spend their time studying for less than an hour while 54.5% of men spend more than an hour and 76.9% of women spend more than an hour learning. This leads us to believe that women tend to experience fewer failures as they put more effort into studying and relearning topics on their own time. It has been discovered that women have fewer absences and participate in fewer extracurricular activities compared to males. We have also come to the conclusion that women tend to receive extra educational support, approximately 6.7% more support than men. This led us to question whether there may be an underlying issue, such as women performing better in school, making schools more willing to provide them with extra support, which in turn leads to the disproportionate representation of women in support from school systems.
Are women more likely to be expected to be involved in school involvement and/or perfectionism, while it is more acceptable for men to work less hard in school? This explores the question of whether gender is correlated with school performance and then examines the comparison of academic performance between males and females.