Page 19 - Standard Indicators for the social appropriation of science
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Scale
The selection of the scale can have a wide disbelieve, disbelieve, neither believe nor
influence in the results obtained from a disbelieve, believe, strongly believe).
questionnaire.
• The answers are not expressed numerically
Given that the standardisation of responses (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) but verbally so that all respondents
in the questionnaire largely eliminates the can understand them as unambiguously and
possibility of recording specific and original equally as possible and then so that they can
answers of individuals from the surveyed choose the one that is closest to them and with
population, it is desirable, on the other hand, which they can best identify.
that respondents be offered adequate options • Verbal variants of the answers (and not
that are as close to them as possible. And even numerical ones) can also be clearly interpreted
though these options may be general, they in the research results.
still correspond to their situation, opinions, • They are easier for respondents to move
attitudes or evaluations. through the questionnaire, and they are not
confused with several scales with different
In our case, the 5-point Likert scale was number of degrees.
therefore very suitable for recording the • Visually, the questionnaire is clearer and
knowledge, perception, beliefs and trust of more friendly to fill out.
respondents analogously used in all 4 topics • Use of the same pattern of scale answers
in our research: climate change, vaccination, also has other advantages in more advanced
GMOs, complementary and alternative statistical processing –e.g., when creating
medicine. variation of change of responses, creation of
indexes, or in cluster analysis.
The main reasons for applying this scale were:
The PERSIST_EU project went beyond
• To offer a continuum of answers from minimum the development of the ICT tool to assess
to maximum. 2 negative degrees + middle knowledge, beliefs and perceptions and
variant + 2 positive degrees (for example: very designed an activity to validate this platform
low, low, moderate, high, very high / strongly and to determine the changes resulting after
participating in this activity, called Science
Camp (SC).
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Persist_EU
