Abstract
Since the 1970s, there has been a growing interest in how individuals appropriate scientific knowledge, which has recently been reinforced by societal issues such as vaccine releases and skepticism about global warming. Faced with the health and social consequences of the mistrust of scientific knowledge, there is an urgent need for tools to measure the acceptance or rejection of scientific knowledge, while at the same time gaining a more detailed understanding of the processes involved. This is the purpose of this article. Thus, we conducted 4 empirical studies to provide a validation of the Credibility of Science Scale from the perspective of a French population, which aims to assess the credibility that individuals attribute to science and to empirically evaluate the link that may exist between the different levels of credibility attributed to science and the social representations of science. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrated good structural validity, the good fidelity (homogeneity and temporal stability), and the good criterion validity of the French version of the scale. In Study 2, we observed the same psychometric qualities of the French version of the scale. We also noted a structuring of the social representation of science based on age (Factor 1) and on the credibility attributed to science (Factor 2). Our results also raise the question of possible means of intervention to promote a better perception of science.
Highlights
In 2019, the World Health Organization identified mistrust of vaccines as one of its ten priority struggles
We interpreted the fit indices based on the benchmark values found in recent literature [45,46,47], namely: Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA; good if < .06, acceptable if < .08); the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR; good if < .05, acceptable if < .08), and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI; good if > .95, acceptable if > .90), and the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI; good if > .95, acceptable if > .90)
The value of the RMSEA was slightly too high, and examination of the residue correlation matrix told us to add a correlation between the errors of items 2 and 3, so the adjustment improved (CFI = .992; TLI = .985; SRMR = .020; RMSEA = .040)
Summary
In 2019, the World Health Organization identified mistrust of vaccines as one of its ten priority struggles. The Director-General of the World Health Organization declared that rumors and misinformation regarding vaccines, spread mainly on the Internet, constituted a bigger threat than the diseases themselves [1]. One illustration of the detrimental consequences of this phenomenon is the outbreaks of measles occurring all over the world, including countries where this virus was supposed to be have been eliminated, such as the U.S A. Such a phenomenon can be attributed to misinformation from anti-vaccine groups and to a lack of trust in public health agencies [2,3]. The case of vaccine hesitancy is just one example of a larger phenomenon: as public opinion tends to be increasingly
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