Counter-stereotypical thinking on scientists
To measure adolescent students’ perceptions away from experts beyond physical traits, the analysis cluster adjusted four products regarding early in the day related education one interviewed primary people (DeWitt et al., 2011) and you may youngsters (Wyer ainsi que al., 2010). A couple of situations inquire about the sort of really works you to definitely experts manage: “Experts usually functions by yourself from inside the laboratories” and “Scientists could work from inside the communities otherwise communities”; if you find yourself around three circumstances need views on scientists’ passions and personal services: “Most experts try geeks otherwise nerds,” “Individuals who are effective in research can’t be great at other one thing, eg sports or art,” and you may “Experts is actually interested and creative someone.” All these affairs got impulse kinds anywhere between step one (Strongly Disagree) in order to 4 (Firmly Agree); situations that have a bad valence (e.grams., Most experts is actually geeks or nerds) was reverse-coded so as that for everybody factors, a top score depicted a far more confident otherwise stop-stereotypical have a look at. Utilizing the Skewness-Kurtosis shot getting normality (thru Stata analytical application), i concluded that brand new distribution of all of the five facts somewhat deviated regarding the normal distribution from each other opinions from skewness and you will kurtosis. Particularly, in keeping with particular past browse talked about over (Garriott et al., 2017; Nassar-McMillan ainsi que al., 2011), stuff was basically all of the negatively skewed, in a fashion that overall youngsters kept quite confident feedback regarding the scientists. Thus, we dichotomized each goods, such that step 1 illustrated highly agreeing which have a table-stereotypical statement in the scientists (score off cuatro otherwise strongly concur) and you may 0 represented a rating away from step 3 otherwise below. Footnote 3
Separate parameters
To determine the factor structure underlying the five items related to counter-stereotypical beliefs about scientists and establish its validity, we randomly divided our sample into two separate and equal-sized groups to conduct exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (DeCoster, 1998; Fabrigar et al., 1999). The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using a principal factors extraction method was conducted with the first sub-set of data, representing half of our dataset (N = 554). This produced a one-factor solution, as indicated by the inspection of the scree plot test and eigenvalues (Costello Osborne, 2005), that explained about 41% of the variance. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of 0.72 indicated an acceptable sampling adequacy (Kaiser, 1974). Additionally, all items loaded onto the single factor, with factor loadings ranging from 0.58 to 0.71, and communalities ranging from 0.33 to 0.51. These moderate to strong factor loadings and our conceptualization of students’ counter-stereotypical beliefs about scientists suggest that all five items be retained (Costello Osborne, 2005). Subsequently, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to validate the structure of the factor with the second half of our sample (N = 554). The fit statistics indicated an adequate model fit, including a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of 0.08 (where values less than or equal to 0.08 indicate an acceptable fit, and 90% CI is [0.05,0.11]), a comparative fit index (CFI) of 0.94 (where values greater than 0.90 indicate an acceptable model fit) and a Standardized Root Mean Squared Residual (SRMR) of 0.04 (where values less than or equal to 0.08 indicate a good fit) (Hu Bentler, 1999; Kline, 2015). While the chi-squared statistic for the CFA model xmeeting was significant (? 2 = , df = 5, p < 0.001), this statistic is known to be sensitive to large sample sizes such as ours (Hair et al., 2010). The standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.41 to 0.54, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.60, which is somewhat low but still within the acceptable range (Bagozzi Yi, 1988; Hair et al., 2010).
Finally, in order to make the dimensions used in the fresh analyses shown right here, students’ responses across the all the things was averaged, in order for higher results to the measure capture carrying a lot more counter-stereotypic thinking throughout the scientists, if you find yourself lower scores portray the contrary. This means, our very own size try a way of measuring solid prevent-stereotypical viewpoints in the boffins, whilst captures philosophy that aren’t just simple views regarding scientists, but rather views away from researchers that are the brand new anti-thesis away from generally slim and you will restrictive stereotypical photo (e.grams., boffins is actually geeks or nerds, and you may boffins works alone from inside the a lab). I declaration gender and you will racial/ethnic differences in restrict-stereotypical beliefs from the results point.