An Investigation of Taiwan's Public Attitudes Toward Science and Technology

The Relationships Among Adult Affective Factors, Engagement in Science, and Scientific Competencies

“…The subject population in this study was composed of Taiwanese adults between the ages of 18 and 70 years. The cluster analysis was used to divide the townships/district in Taiwan into six stratums (Table 1) using six urbanization indicators (population density, percentage of the population aged 15 to 64 years, percentage of the population more than age 65, educational level, percentage of the industrial population, and percentage of the service population) proposed by Wu et al (2012) and Shein, Li, and Huang (2015). Three phases of probability proportional to size sampling were conducted for each stratum according to “township/district—village—citizen” and samples were selected by systematic sampling in accordance with population proportion (Table 1).…”

“…Three phases of probability proportional to size sampling were conducted for each stratum according to “township/district—village—citizen” and samples were selected by systematic sampling in accordance with population proportion (Table 1). After selecting 60 villages to predict the failure interviews and guarantee that the target interview could be achieved, citizens samples in each village were expanded by the (success + failure)/success ratios which were recommended by previous study (Wu et al, 2012). The expanded number of participants was 1,554 and the final successful sample was 504 citizens.…”

“…Falk and Needham (2013) surveyed 1,018 people in Los Angeles and found that predictive factors for adult self-reported knowledge included engagement in science, formal schooling, and work experience. Within Taiwan, Wu et al (2012) sampled 2,024 adults to investigate their attitudes toward scientific issues. Within their model, a latent variable which comprised adult interest and engagement in science construct was highly correlated to scientific literacy.…”

“…This illustrates that surveys conducted with adult groups still hold importance. Although Falk et al (2007) and Wu et al (2012) used adult groups as their research subjects, the studies of Lin et al (2013) and Wlodkowski (2003) proposed a more comprehensive model by including affective factors. The above reviews indicate that a study that establishes a distinguishing model to assess the predictive effects of affective factors and engagement in science in terms of scientific literacy is still lacking.…”