How Education, Occupation, and Gender Influence Science Reasoning

本研究考察了性别、教育程度和职业对科学推理、基础知识和伪科学支持的影响。它将使用一个独特的、未得到充分利用的NSF档案：1979-1999年间美国公众对科学和技术的态度调查。在早期的研究中，首席调查者在控制了教育和职业后，发现了知识和伪科学的性别差异。在这项提案中，教育和职业将被更详细地审查，并将包括科学推理的各个方面，如理解实验或基本概率。它将研究这些预测因素如何随着时间的推移与推理和知识相互作用，包括评估性别、教育维度和职业维度的影响的因果结构方程模型。它还将研究基础知识、推理和伪科学支持之间的关系，控制性别、教育和职业。这些结果可能会对政府机构、教育工作者、关心问题的公民和研究性别、舆论以及科学、技术和社会的学者有用。

This study examines how gender, education, and occupation affect science reasoning, basic knowledge, and pseudoscience support. It will employ a unique, underutilized, NSF archive: the Surveys of U.S. Public Attitudes Toward Science and Technology 1979-1999. In earlier research, the principal investigator discovered sex differences in knowledge and pseudoscience after controlling for education and occupation. In this proposal, education and occupation will be examined in more detail, and will include aspects of science reasoning, such as understanding experiments or basic probability. It will examine how these predictors interact with reasoning and knowledge over time, including causal structural equation models that assess the effects of gender, dimensions of education, and dimensions of occupation. It will also study relationships among basic knowledge, reasoning, and pseudoscience support, controlling for gender, education, and occupation. These results could prove useful to government agencies, educators, concerned citizens, and scholars who study gender, public opinion, and science, technology and society.