ATTITUDES TOWARD NUCLEAR-ENERGY - ONE POTENTIAL PATH FOR ACHIEVING SCIENTIFIC LITERACY

The widespread problem of the scientific literacy of the general public has been previously acknowledged. However, an uninformed populace can jeapordize the future direction of major science-related public policy issues, such as nuclear energy, by basing their support on generally emotional or nonfactual grounds. As part of a larger study aimed at concurrently identifying the attitudes of secondary school students toward several science-related topical areas (i.e., nuclear energy, environmental issues, energy concepts, science concepts, space exploration, and metrication), a nine-item Nuclear Attitude Instrument (NAI) was developed. This scale was subsequently validated and administered to a sample of grade 9 and 10 students (N = 172) of average achievement and ability, at a predominantly middle-class suburban high school in New York State. Yielding a coefficient alpha of 0.87 and a corrected item-total correlation mean of 0.61, the NAI responses displayed statistically significant topical area correlations (p < 0.01) with environmental issues (inverse), energy concepts (inverse) and space exploration (direct). Presented in the format of a factor analytic path model, nuclear energy was also found to be incorporated in a distal rather than a proximal attitudinal structure among the respondents. These relationships bear educators' consideration during both course content material selection and curriculum design, for the purpose of positively enhancing students' attitudinal development toward science-related topical areas. (C) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.