A performance gap between the genders has been observed on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) almost since its introduction. Many studies have sought to characterize this gender gap, however, few have tested the consistency of the factor structure across the genders. This study fills in this gap by offering the first piece of evidence that the genders (male and female due to data constraints) are interacting with the FCI in similar manners. Using multigroup measurement invariance techniques, a preinstruction sample of 6238 males and 2874 females, and a postinstruction sample of 6338 males and 2955 females, the latent variable structure of the FCI was tested for consistency between the genders. As this technique is not often used by the physics education research community, significant time was spent explaining the methodology. It was found that the Eaton and Willoughby five-factor modified (EW5M) model of the FCI factor structure exhibited strict invariance between the genders. Additionally, a single-factor model showed strong invariance and partial strict invariance for the FCI. Latent means from the EW5M model revealed that females underperform compared to males across all of the factors of the FCI, but these gaps in performance decreased over the course of instruction, however, some differences are still large. The results of this study suggest observed performance differences on the FCI between the genders may not be due to gender specific factor structure differences. However, this result is sample dependent and should be verified by other studies using different, independent samples.

中文翻译：

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部队概念清单的性别测量不变性的证据

自《部队概念清单》（FCI）引入以来，已经发现性别之间存在性能差异。许多研究试图描述这种性别差距，但是，很少有研究测试跨性别因素结构的一致性。这项研究通过提供第一条证据来证明性别（由于数据限制，男性和女性）正在以类似的方式与FCI互动，从而填补了这一空白。使用多组测量不变性技术，6238位男性和2874位女性的指导前样本以及6338位男性和2955位女性的指导后样本，对FCI的潜在变量结构进行了性别性别一致性的测试。由于物理教育研究社区并不经常使用此技术，因此花费了大量时间来解释该方法。研究发现，FCI因子结构的伊顿和威洛比五因子修正（EW5M）模型在性别之间表现出严格的不变性。此外，单因素模型显示出FCI的强不变性和部分严格不变性。EW5M模型的潜在手段表明，在FCI的所有因素中，女性的表现都比男性差，但是在教学过程中，这些性能差距有所减少，但是，有些差异仍然很大。这项研究的结果表明，性别之间在FCI上观察到的性能差异可能不是由于性别特定的因素结构差异所致。但是，该结果取决于样品，应通过其他研究使用不同的独立样品进行验证。