Assessment of attitudes towards evolution and understanding of evolutionary processes and concepts across Europe
Creators: name: Beniermann, Anna
name: Kuschmierz, Paul
name: Graf, Dittmar
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: assessment of acceptance of evolution
assessment of understanding of evolution
assessment of knowledge of evolution
international comparative survey
multi-item instrument
questionnaire
Europe
university freshmen students

description: The assessment of acceptance as well as understanding of evolution is a central issue for science education research. Most international comparative surveys that aim to measure acceptance of evolution or understanding of evolution collect data by use of one single-item in the form of a multiplechoice question that often compounds different constructs in one question. Until now, no international comparative study has been performed to compare the state of evolution acceptance and understanding by means of multi-item instruments. Additionally, there is no consensus on the nature of the relationship between evolution acceptance and evolution understanding within the evolution education community, even if it was shown that different evolution acceptance measures lead to diverging results. We developed a questionnaire to assess acceptance and understanding of evolution as well as religious faith within a European research network (EuroScitizen COST Action) and administered it to university freshmen across 22 European countries. In doing so, we aim to provide comparable data that can help to clarify, if the relationship between evolution acceptance and understanding differs between the participating European countries with their varying cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, these results will give information about the state of knowledge and acceptance of students who all recently finished secondary education. The networking for this work has been funded by EuroScitizen COST Action (CA17127 – http://www.euroscitizen.eu/).
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