Design vs. Content: A Study of Adolescent Girls' Website Design Preferences

This study considered the utility of gender schema theory in examining girls' website design preferences. It built on a previous study which identified eight website evaluation criteria related to biological sex: collaboration, social connectivity, flexibility, motility, contextuality, personal identification, inclusion, and graphic/multimedia concentration. Eleven fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-old girls participated in the study. The participants completed the short form of the Children's Sex-Role Inventory (CSRI). Following 50-minute Web searching sessions, they were divided into a feminine-high group and a masculine-high group based on their CSRI scores. Each group then participated in interviews concerning their website evaluation and design preferences. Data analysis identified relationships between gender schema and five of the proposed criteria: social connectivity, flexibility, motility, inclusion, and graphic/multimedia concentration. More generally, members of the feminine-high group favored evaluation criteria relating to graphic and multimedia design, whereas members of the masculine-high group favored evaluation criteria relating to subject content. These results indicate that gender schema theory can indeed serve as a framework for making website design more appealing to female adolescent users.