Counter-stereotypical thinking regarding scientists
To measure teenage students’ thinking off boffins beyond bodily characteristics, the research party adapted five products out-of earlier relevant degree you to definitely surveyed primary pupils (DeWitt et al., 2011) and you will pupils (Wyer ainsi que al., 2010). A couple of affairs find out about the type of functions one to experts create: “Boffins always functions by yourself for the laboratories” and “Researchers can perhaps work inside teams otherwise organizations”; when you are around three points need viewpoints about scientists’ hobbies and personal qualities: “Very experts is actually geeks otherwise nerds,” “Those who are great at technology cannot be good at almost every other things, such as for instance sporting events otherwise artwork,” and “Scientists is actually interested and inventive individuals.” Every one of these activities got effect classes between step one (Highly Differ) in order to cuatro (Strongly Agree); activities that have an awful valence (age.grams., Really experts was geeks or nerds) was basically contrary-coded making sure that for everyone facts, a top get represented an even more self-confident or prevent-stereotypical view. By using the Skewness-Kurtosis decide to try for normality (through Stata statistical software), i concluded that the newest shipment of all of the four circumstances rather deviated from the normal shipment out-of one another opinions of skewness and you will kurtosis. Particularly, consistent with particular earlier in the day browse talked about more than (Garriott et al., 2017; Nassar-McMillan et al., 2011), stuff had been most of the adversely skewed, such that full students kept somewhat self-confident opinions from the scientists. Hence, we dichotomized per product, in a fashion that step 1 illustrated highly agreeing that have a workbench-stereotypical report in the scientists (score away from cuatro otherwise strongly agree) and you will 0 represented a rating of step 3 otherwise less than. Footnote 3
Independent details
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 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).
In the long run, to make the scale included in the fresh new analyses showed right here, students’ responses across the circumstances had been averaged, to ensure highest results towards the measure grab carrying significantly more avoid-stereotypic opinions regarding the boffins, when you are straight down ratings portray the alternative. Simply put, our size try a measure of solid avoid-stereotypical values from the boffins, as it captures opinions that are not belarus gay dating site only natural opinions from researchers, but alternatively opinions away from boffins that are this new anti-thesis of traditionally thin and you may limiting stereotypical images (elizabeth.g., boffins is actually geeks or nerds, and you will researchers works by yourself for the a laboratory). I report sex and you can racial/cultural differences in stop-stereotypical thinking throughout the overall performance point.
