A Preliminary Report on the Measurement of a “Global” Weather Curiosity: The Brief Epistemic Weather Curiosity Questionnaire (EWCQ-B) and Implications for the Measurement of Weather Curiosity

Abstract

Here, we describe archival data analysis from a recent paper (Bolton et al., 2022) on the development of a self-report measure of epistemic, or information-based, weather curiosity (the Epistemic Weather Curiosity Questionnaire, or EWCQ). We find that the 4-item, “global” version of the scale presented here (the EWCQ-B) functions essentially as well as the 11-item version. In a more economical package which could serve to reduce participant burden in large studies and which functions without the need to consider lived experiences of weather events and learning contexts, the EWCQ-B has good convergent validity with measures of weather salience, which is the significance of, and attention paid to, weather; systemizing, an analytical cognitive style; weather-warning awareness; storm-preparation self-efficacy beliefs; interest- and deprivation-based curiosity; trait openness; and curiosity to learn science. Implications for the measurement of epistemic weather curiosity are discussed.

Digital Weather Information in an Embodied World

“…Scores on the weather salience questionnaire (WxSQ) have correlated positively with perceptual curiosity and the ability to attend to weather-related stimuli in the environment [15,112]; consulting multiple electronic sources for weather information [12]; detailorientation and pattern recognition [113][114][115][116]; trait openness, weather-warning awareness, storm preparation self-efficacy beliefs, and both generalized epistemic curiosity as well as epistemic weather curiosity [116]. Weather salient people thus bring an interest and acuity to the weather and to weather-related information products.…”