Influence of Gender on Attitudes. Workplace

Gender differences in attitudes toward computer use, although becoming less pronounced, appear relatively early, during the elementary school years, and persist into adulthood. Male students have more positive attitudes than female students, express greater interest in computers and greater confidence in their own abilities, and view computers as having greater utility in society than females at nearly every age level.

One study revealed a moderate difference between males and females in their personal anxiety about using computers, with women displaying greater levels than men, and holding more negative views than men about the influence of computers on society. The findings of this study suggest that gender differences in computer-related behavior are due in part to differences in anxiety.

When anxiety about computers was controlled, there were few differences between males and female’s in computer behavior: It seems that anxiety mediates some gender differences in computer-related behavior. Other studies confirm that gender differences in computer behavior seem to be due to attitudinal and experiential factors.

Compared with men, women report greater anxiety about computer use, lower confidence about their ability to use the computer, and lower levels of liking computer work. However, when investigators control the degree to which tasks are viewed as masculine or feminine and/or control differences in prior experiences with computers, gender differences in attitudes are no longer significant.

Middle-school students differ by gender in their reactions to multimedia learning interfaces and may have different sources for intrinsic satisfaction when using computers. Boys particularly enjoy control over computers and look for navigational assistance within computer games, whereas girls prefer calmer games that include writing and ask for assistance rather than try to find navigational controls.

This indicates that gender differences in attitudes about computers may be influenced in part through experience with gender-preferred computer interfaces, and that attitudes of girls toward computer use improve when gender-specific attention is paid to the design of the interface and the type of tasks presented.

The differences by gender in patterns of Internet use by adults support this conclusion. When individuals are free to determine what type of tasks they do online, gender differences in overall use disappear, although males are more likely to gather information and seek entertainment and women are more likely to interact socially.

Other studies suggest that gender differences in attitudes toward computers may vary with the nature of the task. In one study, college students performed simple or more complex computer tasks. Men and women did not differ in attitudes following the simple tasks. However, the men reported a greater sense of self-efficacy (such as feelings of effective problem-solving and control) than the women after completing the complex tasks.

Such findings suggest that, in addition to anxiety, a lack of confidence affects women more than men in the area of computer use. Training does not always reduce these differences: Although people generally become less anxious about computer use over the course of training, in some cases women become more anxious .

This increase in anxiety may occur even though women report a concomitant increase in a sense of enjoyment with computers as training progressed. With training, both men and women have more positive social attitudes toward computers and perceive computers to be more like humans and less like machines.

To summarize the state of information on attitudes about computer use thus far, results suggest that attitudes about one’s own computer use are related to personal anxiety about computer use as well as to math anxiety.

These relationships are more likely to occur in women than in men. However, when women have more computer experiences, the relationship between anxiety and computer use is diminished and the gender difference is often not observed. Several attitudinal factors seem to be involved in computer use, including math anxiety, feelings of self-efficacy and confidence, personal enjoyment, and positive views of the usefulness of computers for society.

Workplace. Computers are used in a variety of ways in organizations, and computing attitudes and skills can affect both the daily tasks that must be performed in a routine manner and the ability of companies to remain efficient and competitive. The degree of success of computer systems in the workplace is often attributed to the attitudes of the employees who are end users of Inter- and intranet-based applications for communications and workflow, shared workspaces, financial applications, database management systems, data analysis software, and applications for producing Web resources and graphics.

A study of factors influencing attitudes about computing technologies and acceptance of particular technologies showed that three factors were most important in determining user acceptance behaviors: perceived advantages to using the technology for improving job performance, perceived ease of use, and degree of enjoyment in using the technology. Anticipated organizational support, including technical support as well as higher management encouragement and resource allocation, had a significant effect on perceived advantage toward improving job performance, so is an additional factor in determining whether users make use of particular systems.

The study also showed that the perceived potential for improving job performance was influenced by the extent to which the system was observed as consistent with existing needs, values, and past experiences of potential adopters. Overall, however, this and other research shows that the perception that systems will improve job performance is by far the strongest predictor of anticipated use.

Research on the attitudes of employees toward computers in the workplace reveals that, for the most part, computers are observed as having a positive effect on jobs, making jobs more interesting, and/or increasing employee effectiveness. Employees who report negative attitudes cite increased job complexity with the use of computers instead of increased effectiveness. They also report negative attitudes about the necessity for additional training and refer to a reduction in their feelings of competence.

These mixed feelings may be related to their job satisfaction attitudes. When confusion and frustration about computer systems increase, job satisfaction decreases. The negative feelings about their own ability to use computers effectively lead employees to express greater dissatisfaction with the job as a whole.

Work-related computer problems can increase stress. Problems with computer systems (e.g., downtime, difficulties with access, lack of familiarity with software, etc.) often result in an increase of overall work time, a perception of increased workload and pressure, and less feeling of control over the job. In these situations, computers can be viewed as a detrimental force in the workplace even when users have a generally positive attitude toward them.

There is some indication that individuals differ in their reactions to problems with computers, and that these differences play a role in views of the utility of computers on the job. Older staff who feel threatened by computers tend to complain more about time pressures and health- related issues related to computer use, whereas same-age peers who view computers more neutrally or positively report few problems.

Computer-supported collaborative work systems can facilitate group projects by allowing people to work together from different places and different times. Kunzer et al. discuss guidelines for their effective design and use. For a system to be effective, it is important that its functions are transparent so that it is highly usable, and that it provides an information space structured for specific tasks for a particular group.

Web-based portals that include these workspaces can greatly enhance collaborative activities. However, systems that are not highly usable and do not consider the unique requirements of the user are not well accepted and therefore not used. For example, inadequate consideration of user preferences regarding software applications can make it impossible for users to work with familiar sets of tools.

Users then are likely to find other ways to collaborate either offline or in separate, more poorly coordinated applications. Successful shared workspace systems provide basic features such as a document component that allows various file formats with revision control and audit trails; calendars with search capabilities, schedule-conflict notification, and priority settings; threaded discussions with attachments, e-mail notification, and specification of read rights; and contact, project, and workflow management components. Finally, the most usable shared workspaces can be customized to different cooperation scenarios.

Differences in computer anxiety and negative attitudes about the social impact of computers are more likely to occur in some occupations than in others. Individuals in professional and managerial positions generally evidence more positive attitudes toward computers. Particular aspects of some jobs may influence individuals’ attitudes and account for some of these differences.

Medcof found that the relative amounts of computing and non-computing tasks, the job characteristics (such as skill variety, level of significance of assigned tasks, and autonomy), and the cognitive demand (e.g., task complexity) of the computing tasks interact with one another to influence attitudes toward computer use.

When job characteristics are low and the computing components of the job also have low cognitive demand on the user (as in the case of data entry in a clerical job), attitudes toward computer use are negative, and the job is viewed as increasingly negative as the proportion of time spent on the low cognitive demand task increases. If a larger proportion of the work time is spent on a high cognitive demand task involving computer use, attitudes toward computer use and toward the job will be more positive.

Medcof’s findings suggest that under some conditions job quality is reduced when computers are used to fulfill assigned tasks, although such job degradation can be minimized or avoided. Specifically, when jobs involve the use of computers for tasks that have low levels of cognitive challenge and require a narrow range of skills, little autonomy, and little opportunity for interaction with others, attitudes toward computer use, and toward the job, are negative.

But varying types of noncomputing tasks within the job (increased autonomy or social interaction in noncomputing tasks, for example) reduces the negative impact; inclusion of more challenging cognitive tasks as part of the computing assignment of the job is especially effective in reducing negative views of computer use. The attitudes about computers in the workplace therefore depend on the relative degree of computer use in the entire job, the cognitive challenge involved in that use, and the type of noncomputing activities.

Older workers tend to use computers in the workplace less often than younger workers, and researchers have found that attitudes may be implicated in this difference. As older workers tend to have more negative attitudes toward computers than younger workers or those with less seniority, they use them less. Negative attitudes toward computer use and computer anxiety are better predictors of computer use than age alone.