University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
Public Underst Sci. 2023 Jul;32(5):596-604. doi: 10.1177/09636625221147232. Epub 2023 Jan 17.
Long-standing discussions of the so-called urban-rural divide in the United States have uncovered meaningful differences between urbanites and rural residents, but much of this work has focused on political attitudes. However, there is reason to believe that geographic divides also influence Americans' science attitudes, including, for example, positive affect toward scientists and levels of trust in them. Unfortunately, existing work has not clearly ruled out confounding factors such as religiosity, political views, media habits, and conspiracism. This brief article addresses this problem by drawing on survey data from 2016 to test the hypothesis that rural residency will be associated with colder feelings toward the scientific community, even with controls in place. The results offer support for this expectation. These findings lend support to recent arguments that rural Americans' science attitudes are influenced by factors that go beyond demographics, conspiracism, political polarization, differences of religiosity, and (partisan) media consumption.
长久以来，有关美国所谓的城乡差距的讨论揭示了城市居民和农村居民之间存在显著差异，但其中大部分工作都集中在政治态度上。然而，有理由相信，地理差异也会影响美国人的科学态度，包括对科学家的积极态度和对他们的信任程度。不幸的是，现有研究尚未明确排除宗教信仰、政治观点、媒体习惯和阴谋论等混杂因素。本文通过利用 2016 年的调查数据来解决这个问题，检验了这样一个假设，即农村居住与对科学界更冷淡的态度有关，即使控制了这些因素。结果支持了这一假设。这些发现支持了最近的一些观点，即农村美国人的科学态度受到超出人口统计学、阴谋论、政治两极化、宗教差异和（党派）媒体消费等因素的影响。
