  We address previous hypotheses about possible factors influencing the gender
gap in attainment in physics. Specifically, previous studies claim that male
advantage may arise from multiple-choice style questions, and that scaffolding
may preferentially benefit female students. We claim that female students are
not disadvantaged by multiple-choice style questions, and also present some
alternative conclusions surrounding the scaffolding hypothesis. By taking both
student attainment level and the degree of question scaffolding into account,
we identify questions which exhibit real bias in favour of male students. We
find that both multi-dimensional context and use of diagrams are common
elements of such questions.
