Assessing Scientific Literacy: A Taxonomy for Classifying Questions and Knowledge About Scientific Research. Technical Report No. 94-1.

There is growing public recognition that adequate levels of scientific literacy are not being attained by many children and adults. This manual was designed for use in a resarchproject focused on one facet of scientific literacy, namely, how individuals assess the credibility of brief reports of treatment studies. The interest is in (1) the types of requests for information that people make about these reports as an index of their potential to assess credibility of research conclusions and (2) reasons people have for asking these questions as a means to make inferences about the knowledge structures that give rise to their requests. An examination of people's requests and their justifications for the requests is used to determine (1) what people know about features of scientific research; (2) how, when, and whether people engage in evaluative thinking about these features when reading reports of scientific investigations; and (3) how these characteristics of knowledge and thinking vary as a function of age and schooling from adolescence through early adulthood. Responses are used to make inferences regarding the underlying knowledge structures that are involved in the evaluation of scientific research, as well as to understand how structures are related to opportunities to learn. (ZWH)