Q30 remained the item with the most agreement on the post-development survey, while Q4 is replaced by another traditionally phrased item, Q27: "Students should know that scientific knowledge is discovered using the scientific method".
The BARSTL survey contains equal numbers of reform-phrased and traditionally phrased items and the latter are scored in reverse.
Negatively phrased items were reverse-coded to maintain consistency in the MSE scale.
Traditionally phrased items represent a post-positivist perspective of knowledge emphasizing the transmission of knowledge from instructor to student.
Following survey administration, negatively phrased items were coded positively and all data were analyzed using measures of reliability, item analysis, and factor analysis.
The inventory is divided into three subscales, microevolution, macroevolution, and human evolution, with a combination of eight forward and reverse phrased items composing each of the subscales.
The inventory consists of a combination of items such as "I trust scientists can find solutions to our major technological problems" and reversed phrase items such as "We cannot trust scientists because they are biased in their perspectives".
Before we began our analysis we conditioned our data by removing responses from the participants who did not complete all surveys, forward coded reverse phrased items, and removed duplicated answers from the same users.
Therefore, participants who stated that they disagreed or strongly disagreed with traditionally phrased items would obtain a higher total point value and be placed higher on the Wright map (see X values on left side of each Wright map in Fig. 6).
Because of the appearance of positively and negatively phrased items, the responses were recoded with the effect that responses indicating a high acceptance of evolutionary theory receive a score of 5, whereas responses indicating a low acceptance receive a score of 1 (Rutledge and Sadler [2007]).
To score the MATE we followed Rutledge and Warden (1999) procedure, that is: (a) to account for positively and negatively phrased items, the scaling of responses was appropriately reversed so that responses indicative of a high acceptance of evolutionary theory received a score of 5, while answers indicative of a low acceptance received a score of 1.
