Using New Technology to Assess the Academic Writing Styles of Male and Female Pairs and Individuals

Abstract

Background:

Previous research suggests that there are advantages to writing in groups or in pairs compared with writing individually, and that men write differently from women. However, as far as we know, no one has yet used new technology to assess published academic articles written in these different modes.

Method:

We assembled 80 papers from recent issues of the Journal of Educational Psychology as follows: 21 authored by individual men, 21 by individual women, 19 by pairs of men, and 19 by pairs of women. We then used two computer-based measures to assess various textual features of the Abstracts, the Introductions, and the Discussion sections of these 80 papers.

Results:

Several differences were found between these various parts of the journal articles (e.g., the Discussions were more readable than the Introductions and these in turn were more readable than the Abstracts). However, there were few differences between the writing of pairs or individuals, or between that of men and women.

Conclusions:

There was no real evidence to support the notion that writing in pairs would lead to better quality articles or that there would be differences between the readability of papers produced by men and women. Such differences may occur, however, before peer review.