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

调查人员将收集美国约3500名成年人现有样本中广泛的非正式科学教育活动的数据。调查将把这些活动与以前的科学参与形式以及终身STEM学习的各种指标联系起来。这项拟议的工作是美国青年纵向研究(LSAY)的延伸，该研究自1986年以来由NSF资助，目前仍在进行中。之前的工作跟踪了两个全国性的学生队列，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的招生、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。该项目团队保持了大约5,000名学生的高度持续参与，他们现在的年龄在34-38岁之间，其中许多人都有自己的家庭。该项目将延长计划于2009年和2010年进行的调查，以检查这些成年人如何使用博物馆、图书馆、书籍、杂志、报纸、电视和互联网等非正式科学教育资源。该项目将为大样本和多样化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。它将允许调查当前个人和代际非正式科学学习行为与先前学习变量的关系，如学校科学成就、父母参与、大学经历、职业选择以及受访者在学龄期以前使用非正式学习资源。

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.