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

研究人员将收集美国现有样本中约3500名成年人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和终身STEM学习的各种指标联系起来。这项研究是美国青年纵向研究（LSAY）的延伸，该研究自1986年以来一直由美国国家科学基金会资助，目前仍在进行中。之前的研究追踪了两组全国性的学生，他们最初是公立初中和高中的代表，重点关注他们的科学和数学课程注册、内容、成就和职业选择，并从他们的父母和老师那里获得数据。项目团队保持了大约5000名学生的高度持续参与，他们现在年龄在34-38岁之间，其中许多人有了自己的家庭。该项目将延长2009年和2010年的计划调查，以检查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。该项目将为一个大而多样的样本提供互联网时代非正式科学教育资源使用的基线数据。它将允许调查当前非正式科学学习行为的关系，无论是个人还是代际，与先前的学习变量，如学校科学成就、父母参与、大学经历、职业选择和先前使用非正式学习资源，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.