Gender differences in item nonresponse are well-documented in high-stakes achievement tests, where female students are shown to omit more items than male students. These gender differences in item nonresponse are often linked to differential risk-taking strategies, with females being risk-averse and unwilling to guess on an item, even if it could gain them credits. In low-stakes settings, similar trends should not apply, as the students carry no consequence for their performance. Instead, test-taking motivation is argued to be the pivoting factor, with female students seen as more motivated and omitting fewer items than male students. In contrast to the high- and low-stakes achievement tests, less is known about gender differences in item nonresponse in student background questionnaires. Using cross-classified mixed effects models, we examined gender differences in item nonresponse on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 student questionnaire across 80 countries and 71 scales. On average, the odds of male students omitting a questionnaire item were double the odds of female students, consistent with the expected trend in the low-stakes setting. However, we show that gender differences in item nonresponse are not merely a function of the stakes involved for individual students but a more complex phenomenon that is context-dependent and not necessarily stable across countries, scales’ formats, and contents. We argue that examining differences in item nonresponse patterns could serve as a source of additional information about the students’ test-taking behaviour and the quality of the questionnaire.

在高风险成绩测试中，项目不回答的性别差异得到了充分记录，其中女学生比男学生遗漏了更多项目。项目不回应的这些性别差异通常与不同的冒险策略有关，女性厌恶风险，不愿意猜测某个项目，即使这可以为她们赢得学分。在低风险环境中，类似的趋势不应适用，因为学生的表现不会受到影响。相反，考试动机被认为是关键因素，女性学生被认为比男性学生更有动力，遗漏的题目也更少。与高风险和低风险成绩测试相比，人们对学生背景调查问卷中项目不回答的性别差异知之甚少。使用交叉分类的混合效应模型，我们检查了国际学生评估计划 (PISA) 2018 年学生调查问卷中 80 个国家和 71 个量表中不回答项目的性别差异。平均而言，男学生省略问卷项目的几率是女学生的两倍，这与低风险环境中的预期趋势一致。然而，我们表明，项目不答复中的性别差异不仅仅是个别学生所涉及的风险的函数，而且是一个更复杂的现象，它取决于具体情况，并且在不同国家、量表的格式和内容之间不一定稳定。我们认为，检查项目不回答模式的差异可以作为有关学生应试行为和问卷质量的附加信息来源。