Dimensions of identity-representing belief.

ABSTRACTResearch has found students' epistemic beliefs to predict their achievement goal orientations. Much of this research emerged from the dimensional approach of epistemic beliefs, which hypothesized a relationship between particular independent dimensions of epistemic beliefs with different achievement goals. Research in this approach has primarily applied a variable-centered approach to investigating these relations. The authors adopt an alternative conceptualization of epistemic beliefs, which considers epistemic beliefs and achievement goals as orthogonal to each other, and which favors a profile-centered approach to researching their relations. They hypothesized that while a variable-centered analysis would identify relations between epistemic beliefs and achievement goal orientations, a profile-centered analysis would demonstrate the independence of these psychological constructs. In three studies with high school students (ns = 256, 149, 250) the authors demonstrate that epistemic beliefs and achievement goals form different personal profiles that are differentially related to learning strategies.

According to Bowers' ‘spuriousness theory,’ people only support the death penalty because they believe that the currently available alternative punishments are insufficiently harsh or meaningful. I test his theory by estimating the relationship between Americans' perceptions of prisons and their support for the death penalty using data drawn from a national, random sample of the US population. I find that people who perceive prison environments to be insufficiently harsh are also more likely to support the death penalty and less likely to support the alternative punishment of life imprisonment without parole. The relationship between people's perceptions of prison and their support for the death penalty is robust even controlling for their symbolic beliefs and demographic characteristics. I discuss the implications of these findings for theories of public opinion about punishment, capital sentencing, and the politics of criminal justice in the USA.

Background: The number of studies on how to foster change toward advanced epistemic beliefs (i.e., beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing) is continuously growing because these beliefs are an important predictor of learning outcomes. In past intervention studies, presenting diverging information (e.g., descriptions of studies yielding contradictory results) reliably led to epistemic change. However, prior research insufficiently examined which aspects of diverging information affect these changes.Aims: We investigated (1) if epistemic change differs depending on the (un)resolvability of contradictory information, (2) to what extent explicitly reflecting on diverging information supports epistemic change and (3) how topic-specific diverging information affects topic–and domain-specific epistemic beliefs. All confirmatory hypotheses were preregistered at OSF. Additionally, several exploratory analyses were conducted.Method: To examine the research questions, we employed a simple randomized pre-post design with four experimental groups. N = 185 psychology students participated in the study. Experimental groups differed in the kind of diverging information included: Students either read (1) information on students applying learning strategies (control), (2) unresolvable, or (3a) resolvable controversial information on gender stereotyping. In the latter condition (3b), an additional group of participants deliberately resolved apparent contradictions in a writing task.Results: Confirmatory latent change analyses revealed no significant group differences in epistemic change (i.e., beliefs in the control group also changed toward advanced epistemic beliefs). Using a different methodological approach, subsequent exploratory analyses nevertheless showed that presenting diverging information on gender stereotypes produced stronger topic-specific epistemic change and change in justification beliefs in the treatment groups in contrast to the control group. However, effects in the treatment groups did not differ significantly depending on the resolvability of presented controversies or for the group which was instructed explicitly to integrate controversial findings.Conclusion: Contrary to our expectations, diverging information seems to foster epistemic change toward advanced beliefs regardless of the resolvability of presented information, while no final conclusion concerning effects of reflection could be drawn. Moreover, our findings indicate that effects of topic-specific interventions are more pronounced on topic-specific measures. However, this relationship may vary depending on the epistemic belief dimension (e.g., justification beliefs) under investigation.

This study adapted and validated a questionnaire for assessing Namibian students’ scientific epistemic beliefs and explore their relation to achievement in science, gender, grade and socioeconomic status. The study was correlational, with a sample of 944 (45% male; 55% female) Grades 11 and 12 students with the mean age M=17.9, SD= 1.4. A Likert scale questionnaire comprised of four dimensions of beliefs: source; certainty; development; and justification of scientific knowledge. The adapted questionnaire had good reliability with the Cronbach’s alpha of subscales ranging from .80 to .83 and the overall reliability of .70. Model fit analysis yielded good statistical fit with Chi-square ratio to degrees of freedom= 2.71, RMSEA= 0.043, CFI= 0.95, TLI= 0.94, SRMR= .032. The overall regression model was significant F (4, 939) =8.218, p <.001, R2= .034. Two dimensions, certainty (b=.154, p<.001) and justification (b=.100, p<.05) statistically significantly predicted achievement in science. There was statistically significant difference in beliefs about source in terms of gender and grade and about certainty in terms of grade. The results show that the questionnaire works well with the Namibian sample used given the good model fit for the data and reliability. Results are discussed in terms of 21st century skills development.