Concept inventories are widely used in physics education research, yet numerous studies show that concept inventories measure dramatically different learning gains in different demographic groups. Prior studies show that the performance gaps between demographic groups are already present in their preinstruction responses, suggesting that the observed gaps are largely due to students' prior experiences. For college students, these "prior experiences" are often attributed to their high school physics education (or lack thereof). If this is true, then one would expect the performance gaps on the pre-instruction responses to disappear if we control for the highest level of high school physics (e.g., AP/IB, honors, non-honors, or no prior physics whatsoever) taken by students. I investigated this hypothesis by looking at the responses of 1410 college students to the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) at the beginning of their first semester of an introductory college physics class. All 1410 students went to high school in North Carolina before taking their college physics class at a public college or university in North Carolina. I found that performance gaps exist between men and women, even when controlling for prior high school physics course. To further understand the factors that influence this phenomenon, I investigated the role played by a myriad of socio-economic variables in explaining variance in FCI performance of participants who attended public or charter high schools in North Carolina (n = 1168), an investigation lacking in the prior research. I found that many such variables hold statistically significant explanatory power, though few have large explanatory power. Finally, I investigated specific topics on the FCI in order to determine if the trends observed on the overall FCI hold for each topic. I found that, for participants with no prior physics coursework, there was no gap between men and women on questions pertaining to the topic of superposition. Coupled with the fact that the performance gap exists for all other topics and prior coursework subgroups, this finding suggests that certain socio-cultural factors may influence the gender performance gap for both students in formal physics classrooms and individuals who do not take physics courses. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]