Alexandra Adair at her dissertation defense

On November 7th, Dr. Alexandra Adair successfully defended her dissertation on “Measuring Preschool Parents’ Attitudes Towards Science: Development and Psychometric Evaluation of a Parent Version of the Dimension of Attitudes Towards Science Instrument.”

Alexandra Adair with her dissertation committee members and readers. From left: Dr. Megan Silander, Dr. Bruce Homer, Dr. Joan Lucariello, and Dr. Peggy Chen.

Dissertation Abstract:

Presently, no measure or theoretical framework exists for preschool parents’ attitudes towards science. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a measure of preschool parents’ attitudes towards science with a corresponding theoretical framework, as well as explore related constructs. To develop the measure, I adapted Wendt and Rockinson-Szapkiw’s (2017) English translation of van Aalderen-Smeets & Walma van der Molen’s (2013) Dimensions of Attitudes towards Science (DAS) scale by making it appropriate for use with preschool parents.

The Preschool Parents Dimensions of Attitudes towards Science Scale (PP-DAS) was pilot tested and revised before being administered to 330 preschool parents in the United States. Results indicate the measure has solid psychometric properties and supports the application of van Aalderen-Smeets et al.’s (2012) theoretical framework to preschool parents. In addition, further analyses support the relationship between preschool parents’ attitudes towards science with additional related constructs, including parents’ views of science and past science experiences, as well as demographic factors, such as race and income. Lastly, results also indicate there are four classes of preschool parents, based on their attitudes towards science: High Potential, Promising, Indifferent, and Reluctant parents. Overall, this study has the potential to address an existing gap in the field by proposing a theoretical framework and a psychometrically evaluated measure of parental attitudes towards science that can be employed by researchers in subsequent studies.

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