Science-utility and science-trust associations and how they relate to knowledge about how science works.

Cornelia Schoor,Astrid Schütz,Jennifer Steele

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260586

Abstract

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.

Highlights

On the one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have made many people value science [at least in Germany: 1], but on the other hand, the divide between those who put their trust in science and consider it useful for decision-making and those who do not has appeared to increase
The participants were mainly enrolled in psychology (28.4%), teacher education (18.4%), educational science (15.7%), communication sciences (11.1%), or other social sciences (14.9%), which explains the large proportion of women in the sample. 66 participants were in a Master’s program, 141 in a Bachelor’s program, and 48 in Science-utility and science-trust associations a teacher education program, most of which are not part of the bachelor/master system but end in a state examination
In order to analyze science-utility and science-trust associations as well as explicit beliefs of the sample (RQ 1), a t test was calculated in R on the manifest d values of the two implicit association test (IAT) to test them against 0, and on the mean scores of the self-report scales to test them against the scale midpoint of 3

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have made many people value science (again) [at least in Germany: 1], but on the other hand, the divide between those who put their trust in science and consider it useful for decision-making and those who do not has appeared to increase. The COVID-19 pandemic shows vividly that positive beliefs about science are an asset that we should strive for. People who are informed about scientific findings and trust in these findings are more likely to comply with the rules that have been set forth to contain the pandemic [9]. The present paper aims to assess science-utility and science-trust associations as well as explicit beliefs about science and test their predictive potential

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Results

Conclusion