Learning Resources LSP0339-UK 5-in-1 Outdoor Measure-Mate

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Buss, D. M., & Barnes, M. (1986). Preferences in human mate selection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(3), 559–570. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.50.3.559. Linacre JM, Tennant A. More about critical eigenvalue sizes in standardized-residual principal components analysis (PCA). Rasch Measu Trans. 2009;23(3):1228. The purpose of this study was to examine the measurement properties of the items contained in three quantitative evolution acceptance instruments, each of which captures evolution acceptance differently in terms of dimensionality and context. The MATE was designed as a unidimensional measure which used macroevolution and human evolution contexts in its items (Rutledge and Warden 1999). The I-SEA was developed to capture these contexts in separate constructs; it was designed to measure acceptance of microevolution, macroevolution, and human evolution as three respectivedimensions (Nadelson and Southerland 2012). The GAENEwas designed to provide a unidimensional measure of evolution acceptance which is independent of knowledge of evolution and religious orientation (Smith et al. 2016). Given the high similarity of wording between many of the items on the three instruments and the fact that they share a common Likert measurement scheme, we hypothesized that these instruments may share more similarities than differences and actually provide similar quantitative information about evolution acceptance. We found that this is the case. Putting the 57 items from the three instruments together to form an instrument-independent scaling results in useful unidimensional and two-dimensional parametrizations of evolution acceptance. Webster, G. D., Jonason, P. K., & Schember, T. O. (2009). Hot topics and popular papers in evolutionary psychology: analyses of title words and citation counts in evolution and human behavior, 1979–2008. Evolutionary Psychology, 7(3), 348–362.

Scott EC. Evolution vs creationism: an introduction. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2005.Bentler, P. M. (1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 238–246. https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-2909.107.2.238.

Todd A, Romine WL, Cook Whitt K. Development and validation of the learning progression-based assessment of modern genetics in a high school context. Sci Educ. 2017;101(1):32–65.Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12(1), 1–49. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X00023992. Masci D. For Darwin Day, 6 facts about the evolution debate. 2017. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/10/darwin-day/. Retrieved 3 Sept 2018.

What is the dimensionality of the corpus of items provided by the MATE, I-SEA, and GAENE, and how can the dimension(s) be interpreted? Rasch analysis gives compelling evidence for the usefulness of these items as a unidimensional measure, but as with the EFA, also suggests that a two-dimensional construction may increase the usefulness of the measure. When the 57 items are treated as measuring a single factor, acceptanceof evolution, they yield measures with a reliability of 0.98 (separation = 6.71). Further, 46 out of the 57 items (81%)fit the Rasch model well, indicating that most of the items provide useful measures for acceptance of evolution as a single dimension. Five of these items displayed at least one fit index (mean squares infit or outfit) above 1.50, while the other six items displayed a fit index above 1.30. Hu LT, Bentler PM. Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Struct Equ Model. 1999;6(1):1–55.Romine WL, Todd AN. Valuing evidence over authority: the impact of a short course for middle-level students exploring the evidence for evolution. Am Biol Teacher. 2017;79(2):112–9.