Sex-role stereotyping: changes in attitude of 3-,4-, and 5-year-old children

The purpose of the study was to determine if an educational intervention could change the sex-role stereotypes of three-, four-, and five-year-old boys and girls situated in preschool settings. An experimental research design, using pre and post testing with the Sex-Role Learning Index (SERLI), was used with a treatment and control group.

Data were collected from 119 subjects enrolled in four preschools within the same community almost equally divided into a treatment (n=61) and control group (n=58). Teachers of both groups (treatment and control) read three books to the children each week for a period of seven weeks. The treatment group listened to nonsexist books about different occupations (the intervention), while the control group listened to a variety of children's literature taken from a well- stocked preschool library. The children in each group were tested before the reading was begun and after the seven weeks with the Sex Role Learning Index, which yielded scores for sex-role discrimination scores (Own and Both), and sex-role preference scores (Children and Adult figures). A three-way analysis of variance was used to test the null hypotheses guiding the study.

Major findings of the study were: 1) Overall, the educational intervention effectively changed the sex-role stereotypes held by the children in this study; 2) The intervention had a greater overall change effect on the sex-role stereotypes of the girls as compared to the boys.