Influence of Gender and Country of Origin on the Overexcitabilities of American and Korean High School Students with High Ability

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of country of origin and gender on the overexcitabilities of American and Korean high school student's with high ability. The Overexcitability Questionnaire (OEQ II) was used to determine the OE of each student. Two archival studies provided the participants for this study. The study compared the OEs of 227 American students identified as gifted by the Ohio Rule for the Identification of Gifted Students to the OEs of 338 Korean students from four domain specific high schools. Korean students were accepted to these schools based on competitive examination. A 2 (Gender) x 2 (Place) subject analysis of variance (ANOVA) was ran on each of five subscales of the OEQ II to examine the relationship among gender, country of origin, and emotional development. The results of this study revealed that there were significant differences for American and Korean high school students of high ability on scores of imaginational and psychomotor overexcitability. The ANOVA further revealed significant differences for male and female high school students of high ability from both countries on scores of imaginational overexcitability. Significant differences for males and females between American and Korean high school students of high ability on scores of emotional and sensual overexcitability were also found. Because this study was limited to two specific geographic areas no broad claims could be made about the results, other than gifted students from both countries demonstrated OEs and significant differences were found in these overexcitabilities.