Reducing the Administrative Demands of the Science Curiosity Scale (SCS): A Validation Study

Abstract

Science curious people -- those who enjoy consuming science-related information -- are less likely to hold polarized views about contentious science. Consequently, science curiosity is of great interest to scholars across the social sciences. However, measuring science curiosity via the science curiosity scale (SCS; Kahan et al., 2017) is highly time intensive; potentially impeding its widespread usage. In this paper, we present two new methods for reducing SCS administration time. One method presents respondents with a randomly selected subset of items (the "Random Subset Method; RS"). The other asks all respondents a core set of just four items (the "Reduced-Form Method; RF"). In three nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults, we assess the construct, convergent, and predictive validity of these alternatives. Across studies, the RS and RF versions of the SCS appear to be well validated. We conclude by discussing how researchers can apply these insights into their own research.