A recent study by Baye and Monseur (Large Scale Assess Educ 4:1–16, 2016) using large, international educational data sets suggest that the “greater male variation hypothesis” is well supported. Males are often over-represented at the tails of the ability distribution despite similarity in measures of central tendency and the gradual closing of the attainment gap relative to females. In this study, we replicate and expand Baye and Monseur’s work, and explore greater male variability by country using meta-analysis and meta-regression. While we broadly confirm that variability is greater for males internationally, we find that there is significant heterogeneity between countries, and that much of this can be quantified using variables applicable across these assessments (such as test, year, male–female effect size, mean country score and Global Gender Gap Indicators). While it is still not possible to make any causal conclusions regarding why males are more varied than females in academic assessments, it is possible to show that some national level variables effect the magnitude of this variation. Results and suggestions for further work are discussed.

中文翻译：

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各国在阅读，数学和科学方面的变异性性别差异：Baye和Monseur的荟萃分析扩展（2016）

Baye和Monseur最近进行的一项研究（大规模评估教育4：1–16，2016）使用大型国际教育数据集表明，“更大的男性变异假说”得到了很好的支持。尽管在集中倾向的测量方法和相对于女性的成就差距逐渐缩小方面相似，但男性通常在能力分布的尾部过分代表。在这项研究中，我们复制和扩展了Baye和Monseur的工作，并使用荟萃分析和荟萃回归探索了不同国家的男性差异性。尽管我们广泛确认国际上男性的变异性更大，但我们发现国家之间存在显着的异质性，并且可以使用适用于这些评估的变量（例如测试，年份，男女效应大小，平均国家分数和全球性别差距指标）。尽管在学业评估中仍不可能得出为什么男性比女性差异更大的因果结论，但有可能表明某些国家层面的变量会影响这种差异的程度。讨论了进一步工作的结果和建议。