Abstract
The primary purpose of the study was to determine whether books recommended for boys and for girls by Public elementary school librarians differed significantly in evidences of sex role stereotyping. A random survey of public elementary school librarians in the state of Texas asked librarians to recommend five books for boys and for girls in grades 1-3, and five books for boys and for girls in grades U-6. The thirty-six most frequently recommended titles, grouped according to sex and grade level divisions, provided the sample for analysis. Twenty-seven titles were randomly selected from Children's Books in Brint} 1975. The recommended books were compared with the randomly-selected books to investigate if differences existed between those two groups. A content analysis was made in four areas: pictorial presence, narrative presence, role options, and descriptive expressions. Three independent raters were given specific guidelines for the analysis and those persons read all of the books chosen for the study. Each rater tabulated the counts of male and female designations for the four areas of content analysis. A Chi-square analysis was performed in each content area and for each grade level division. Based upon these analyses, in the areas of pictorial presence and narrative presence, grades 1-3, the librarian recommended books for boys and for girls differed significantly in both grades 1-3 and grades 4-6. Narratively, however, the recommendations for boys and for girls in grades 4-6 differed significantly in the pictorial analysis, but did not differ significantly in the narrative analysis. Even though many more role options were available to males than to females in librarian-recommended books, the books recommended for boys and for girls did not differ significantly in the role options analysis at either grade level division. Because of the low interrater reliability, it was determined that the technique utilizing descriptive expressions, as analyzed in this study, is not a valid way to measure sex role stereotyping or bias in children books. In view of the evidence gained in this study, the findings appeared to warrant the following recommendations....
Tullos, Tanya (1979). The role of women in children's literature : what do books recommended by public elementary school librarians reflect?. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -671150.