Factors Influencing Science Attitudes and Beliefs

The purpose of this study is to understand if there is a demographic variable that predicts science literacy, and if science literacy makes one less likely to believe in pseudoscience. The demographic variables that were tested were age, gender, religion, political affiliation, highest degree completed, field aforementioned degree is in, and industry in which one is employed. Participants were given 40 statements in total and asked to select whether they strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree with that given statement. Statements ranged from scientific facts to historical conspiracies, superstitions and myths. All the data was examined as a whole, followed by comparisons between demographic data and statements. Overall, men were more likely to answer science related questions correctly, while women believed more in conspiracies and myths. Although some trends were identified in the other demographic data sets, the beliefs were either too inconsistent or lacked enough data points to be considered significant. Thus, gender was the only demographic that could be used to predict one’s beliefs.