Abstract
Over the last two decades, studies and opinion polls have sought to quantify and qualify acceptance of the facts and theory of evolution by Americans in the public and at schools and universities. These studies and polls typically examine associations between evolution acceptance and factors such as age, religiosity, or education experience. Fewer studies have considered how evolution acceptance is associated with types of variables such as personal interests, behaviors, and decision-making. This chapter reviews research on populations of undergraduates attending large public universities in the southeastern and southwestern United States. I consider how exposure to the theory and facts of evolution during K-12 and undergraduate schooling is associated with undergraduate students’ interests, behaviors, and decision-making about social issues that have a scientific basis.
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The survey of ASU students did not rely on items from the MATE. The MATE uses equivalent item rewording for the purposes of alternate form reliability-testing. I selected seven unique questions from the MATE and validity tested the responses based on interviews with 45 ASU students. Answers to the seven questions were not valid indicators of the nuanced information required for the study. In addition, as explained by Rissler et al. (2014), two of the original MATE questions confound acceptance or rejection based on knowledge with acceptance or rejection based on adherence to religious schema or cultural identity. Finally, a total MATE score cannot be used to distinguish between general evolution acceptance and human evolution acceptance, which may differ and were measured separately for ASU students.
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Though this ASU student was not a STEM major, evidence from her undergraduate academic records suggests that she may have been a successful STEM degree student. The two courses she completed to meet ASU science course requirements were plant biology and introduction to geology; she earned an A in both courses.
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Schrein, C. (2017). Evolution Acceptance Among Undergraduates in the South. In: Lynn, C., Glaze, A., Evans, W., Reed, L. (eds) Evolution Education in the American South. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95139-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95139-0_6
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