A reexamination of gender-based attitudes toward group projects: Evidence from the Google Online Marketing Challenge

Using data from the Google Online Marketing Challenge participant survey, we reexamined the notion that women have a universal preference for group work. Our data suggest that there are gender differences in respondents’ answers to group-related questions. However, our analysis suggests that – in most cases – these differences are accounted for by the tendency of males to have greater confidence in their Internet-related skills than females. For the most part, our results are consistent with expectations. That is, males, or more specifically those with greater confidence in their technical skills, are more likely to prefer working alone on difficult tasks or tasks in which the needed information is spread across several sources (e.g., the Internet, journals, and books). When asked about a generic project, however, the results contradicted expectations, indicating that women are more likely to prefer working alone. More importantly, the data suggest that confidence in Internet skills also plays a role in explaining this counter-intuitive result. That is, females with low confidence in their skills prefer to work in groups, while those with greater confidence are more independent. Finally, female participants, of all confidence levels, reported that their groups were less cooperative during the Challenge.