Study of Informal Science Resource Use among Young Adults and Their Families

研究人员将收集美国现有约3，500名成年人样本的广泛非正式科学教育活动的数据，并将这些活动与先前的科学参与形式以及终身STEM学习的各种指标联系起来。 这项工作是美国青年纵向研究（LSAY）的延伸，该研究自1986年以来一直由NSF资助，目前仍在进行中。先前的工作跟踪了两个国家的学生群体，他们最初是公立初中和高中的代表，重点是他们的科学和数学课程的入学，内容，成就和职业选择，并从他们的父母和老师的数据。项目小组一直保持着很高的持续参与率，约有5 000名学生，现在年龄在34至38岁之间，其中许多人有自己的家庭。该项目将扩大2009年和2010年的计划调查，以研究这些成年人如何使用非正式的科学教育资源，如博物馆、图书馆、书籍、杂志、报纸、电视和互联网。该项目将提供因特网时代非正规科学教育资源使用情况的基线数据，提供大量不同的样本。它将允许调查当前的非正式科学学习行为，个人和代际之间的关系，以前的学习变量，如学校科学成绩，父母的参与，大学的经验，职业选择，和以前使用的非正式学习资源，而受访者是学龄。

The investigators will collect data on a broad range of informal science education activities of an existing sample of approximately 3,500 adults across the U.S. It will relate these activities to prior forms of science involvement and to various indicators of lifelong STEM learning. The proposed work is an extension of the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), a study funded by NSF since 1986 and still ongoing. Prior work has tracked two national cohorts of students who were originally representative of public middle and high schools, focusing on their science and mathematics course enrollment, content, achievement, and career choices, and informed by data from their parents and teachers. The project team has maintained very high levels of continued participation by the approximately 5,000 students, now aged 34-38, many of whom have families of their own. The project will extend the planned surveys for 2009 and 2010 to examine how these adults use informal science education resources such as museums, libraries, books, magazines, newspapers, television, and the Internet. The project will provide baseline data on informal science education resource use in the Internet era for a large and diverse sample. It will allow investigation of the relationships of current informal science learning behaviors, both individual and intergenerational, to prior learning variables such as school science achievement, parental involvement, college experience, career choice, and prior use of informal learning resources while respondents were school-aged.