Department of Educational Research, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.
Department of Personality Psychology and Psychological Assessment, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2021 Dec 16;16(12):e0260586. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260586. eCollection 2021.
Knowledge about how science works, trust in scientists, and the perceived utility of science currently appear to be eroding in these times in which "alternative facts" or personal experiences and opinions are used as arguments. Yet, in many situations, it would be beneficial for the individual and all of society if scientific findings were considered in decision-making. For this to happen, people have to trust in scientists and perceive science as useful. Still, in university contexts, it might not be desirable to report negative beliefs about science. In addition, science-utility and science-trust associations may differ from explicit beliefs because associations were learned through the co-occurrence of stimuli rather than being based on propositional reasoning. We developed two IATs to measure science-utility and science-trust associations in university students and tested the psychometric properties and predictive potential of these measures. In a study of 261 university students, the IATs were found to have good psychometric properties and small correlations with their corresponding self-report scales. Science-utility and science-trust associations predicted knowledge about how science works over and above self-reported beliefs. The results suggest that indirect measures are useful for assessing beliefs about science and can be used to predict outcome measures.
关于科学运作方式的知识、对科学家的信任以及科学的感知实用性，在当前这个“替代事实”或个人经历和观点被用作论据的时代，似乎正在被削弱。然而，在许多情况下，如果在决策中考虑科学发现，将对个人和整个社会都有益。要做到这一点，人们必须信任科学家，并认为科学是有用的。尽管如此，在大学环境中，报告对科学的负面看法可能并不是人们所期望的。此外，科学实用性和科学信任的关联可能与明确的信念不同，因为关联是通过刺激的共同出现而习得的，而不是基于命题推理。我们开发了两个 IAT 来测量大学生的科学实用性和科学信任关联，并测试了这些测量方法的心理测量学特性和预测潜力。在一项对 261 名大学生的研究中，发现 IAT 具有良好的心理测量学特性，与相应的自我报告量表的相关性很小。科学实用性和科学信任关联可以预测对科学运作方式的了解，超过了自我报告的信念。结果表明，间接测量方法对于评估对科学的信念是有用的，并且可以用于预测结果测量。
