'Children's Developing Understanding of Gender Expression' (AsPredicted #111,401)
Author(s) Jenna Alton (University of Maryland) - jalton@umd.edu Andrei Cimpian (New York University) - andrei.cimpian@nyu.edu Lucas Butler (University of Maryland) - lpbutler@umd.edu
Pre-registered on 2022/11/01 08:09 (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? It's complicated. We have already collected some data but explain in Question 8 why readers may consider this a valid pre-registration nevertheless.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? This study investigates the impact of gender expression (i.e., specifically one's gendered dress and hairstyle) on children's stereotyping. We explore how a character's gender expression, varying from masculine to feminine, influences children's gender-stereotype attributions. Participants are asked to rank characters (varying in gender expression and gender categories) in terms of whom they associate most with eight gender stereotypes (four masculine stereotypes, four feminine stereotypes). Four characters will be presented on each trial (i.e., for each stereotype): a masculine male, feminine male, feminine female, and masculine female. Data will be collected from children ages 7-12.
In this study, we are investigating two primary questions:
1. Do children's gender stereotype attributions vary based on a character's gender category and/or gender expression?
2. Are children's stereotype attributions moderated by children's essentialist or benevolent sexism beliefs?
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. There is one key dependent variable: children's rankings (1-4) of each character.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? There are no between-subjects conditions. However, there are two within-subject variables: character gender category and character gender expression.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. First, we will assess if children's rankings differ based on a character's gender category, gender expression, and the interaction of gender category and expression.
To do this we will conduct two linear regressions, one for each type of stereotype (masculine and feminine). For both regressions, participants' character rankings will be the response/dependent variable. We will include four predictors and all interactions: character gender category (i.e., boy vs. girl), character gender expression (i.e., masculine vs. feminine), participant gender (i.e., boy vs. girl), and participant age (as a continuous variable). To account for the fact that each participant provides multiple responses (i.e., rankings), we will cluster the standard errors at the participant level. All predictors will be mean-centered. As a robustness test, we will also run an ordinal logistic model with the same predictors and with standard errors clustered at the participant level.
If the model finds interaction effects, we will conduct the relevant marginal tests to interpret these interactions.
We will also explore the relation between children's gender essentialism and benevolent sexism, on the one hand, and their use of character gender category and gender expression, on the other, in how they rank the characters in terms of gender stereotypes. We will do this by including the essentialism and sexism variables (separately) in the models above, fully interacted with the other variables.
At the end of the sessions, children will rate the gender expression of all characters (i.e., whether each character looks more like a girl or more like a boy). We will use these ratings to verify our description of the characters as feminine vs. masculine in their gender expression. We may also use these continuous ratings in the regressions described above, as replacements for the dichotomous "gender expression" variable.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. We will have the following criteria for data exclusions among participants:
- Parent or sibling interference
- Insufficient attention to the study
- Technical difficulties leading to loss of data or data integrity
- Experimenter error
- Non-binary participants will only be included in analyses that do not involve participant gender
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. We plan to recruit a final sample of 140 participants. Assuming some exclusions, we anticipate collecting data from approximately 160 participants.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) We have so far collected data from 13 out of 140 participants to ensure that the procedure runs smoothly and that children can understand our instructions.
If we find significant main effects of both gender category and gender expression in our models above, we may compare the coefficients of these two variables to draw conclusions about which one has a more powerful influence on children's stereotyped attributions.
To obtain effect size estimates, we may standardize the dependent variable and any continuous predictors and re-run the regression models described above.
We will explore the relation between children's essentialism and benevolent sexism, including whether this relation is moderated by participants' gender and age. We will also explore the relations between these two attitudinal measures and all other measures collected in the study (including the ratings of feminine vs. masculine gender expression).
We will explore variability in children's responses as a function of characteristics of their environment (e.g., political liberalism vs. conservatism), merged with the present data via participants' zip codes.
