Boys are more confident than girls in their ability to learn computer science, and more likely to believe they’ll use it for a future job, a new survey finds.
The technology firm Google and the polling group Gallup analyzed responses from a nationally representative telephone survey of about 1,700 middle and high school students, 1,700 parents, and 1,000 teachers last year.
It found that 62 percent of boys said they could learn computer science if they wanted to, while only 46 percent of girls said the same. And 42 percent of boys said they are likely to have a job in which they’d need computer science skills, but only 33 percent of girls said that. Moreover, females (including students, parents, and teachers) were more likely than males to have false notions about computer science, saying it involves skills such as creating documents and searching the Internet.
