Increasing Scientific Consistency of Answers with Increasing Age - Research Paper Example

ABSTRACT This study was designed to determine the rates at which children present scientifically grounded responses with internal logic to questions posed in both open-ended and forced choice formats. It included 161 children participants recruited from Australia and Singapore and that were clustered in two age groups; 5 to 6 years and 8 to 9 years. The questions were presented individually to these participants by members of a university psychology class and the responses were classified using a simplified scheme wherein a child that answered all questions correctly was considered to have a scientifically consistent model of the earth. Incorrect responses were classified as the participant having a non-scientific model. The results indicate that while the method of questioning does not have a statistically significant impact on the scientific consistency of the participant’s model of the earth, the participant’s age group does have a statistically significant impact. INTRODUCTION How a child views the world and applies conceptions to explain physical phenomenon is one of the fundamental questions of developmental psychology. Complicating this question is the fact that children often apply a number of different concepts to explain a particular phenomenon. Additionally, their responses are often opportunistic and different concepts are formulated and applied without any thought given to a general scientific consistency, particularly when the same phenomenon is placed into several differing contexts or presented at several different times (Tytler, 2006). There have been a number of attempts to determine the causative factors that affect a child’s view of their world and their level of scientific consistency when attempting to apply conceptual ideals to physical phenomena. These have ranged from how phenomena are presented to the child to the child’s age and level of education to the child’s cultural background. As long ago as 1979, psychologists were attempting to draw correlations between the complex interrelationships of biological, ecological, and societal factors that could either constrain or assist in a the development of a child’s worldview (Werner, 1979). In particular there is a massive body of work analyzing how humans normally psychologically and behaviourally develop at various stages of their childhoods (Hartup & Weinberg, 2002). In addition to the biological and environmental factors affecting a child’s development and their age and level of development, is the manner in which questions are posed to the child. In particular, the exact nature of questions as they are presented to a child may have an effect on how that child perceives the physical phenomenon and how they are then able to apply conceptual ideas to explain that phenomenon. One of the most basic divisions on how questions are posed to study participants is whether the question is open ended or close ended. Either type of question has its advantages and disadvantages and may have an effect on how the child’s responses are formulated and rated. While one might anticipate that open-ended questions would allow the child the greatest leeway in their answers and offer the greatest insight into the participant’s level of scientific consistency, this is not always the case. For example, a recently composed questionnaire was created that contained 40 open ended questions. This survey was easy to create and implement, but experienced difficulties once the participants had completed it. In particular, the respondents provided a large amount of extraneous information that was difficult and time-consuming for the researchers to sift through and the responses themselves were often difficult to quantify for comparison (Henning, 2009). These issues illustrate how, while they allow participants greater leeway in providing information to the facilitator, open-ended questions can prove problematic in analysis and quantification once the data has been collected, problematic for scientific research. In turn, forced-choice or close ended questions are nearly the opposite of open ended questions in their advantages and disadvantages. The first significant difference is that these questions can be more difficult and time consuming to write than their open ended cousins. Care must be given to the selection of choices offered by each question, specifically to not clutter the selection with highly unlikely options, to arrange the choices in an appropriate manner that does not unduly influence the selection process, and to include all commonly selected choices as options (Henning, 2009). Obviously this process requires careful consideration, review, and revision before implemented and distributed to the study participants. However, once this initial drafting has been completed, the analysis phase is much quicker and the responses much easier to quantify once the study has concluded and the results are tabulated. Finally, it has been proven that open-ended questions and forced-choice questions may elicit different responses from study participants. For example, a report presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in 2004 indicated when respondents were asked to apply a monetary value on environmental goods, such as those damaged by oil spills, how the question was framed significantly affected the given response. Those respondents faced with closed-ended questions typically assigned a higher monetary value to the environmental goods and also based their responses on a more easily predictable array of factors such as scope, personal ideology, and level of environmentalism (Shaeffer, Lampron, Krosnick, Tompson, Visser, & Hanemman, 2004). This research indicates that regardless of the strengths of weaknesses associated with open and closed questions, the very nature of these differing types of questions may result in different responses from the study participants. Given that “scientific thinking involves a complex set of cognitive and metacognitive skills, and the development and consolidation of such skills require a considerable amount of exercise and practice” (Zimmerman, 2005) this study will first focus on the age of children participants. For the purposes of this study, the participants were grouped into two age categories. The “younger” group was composed of 72 children between the ages of 5 and 6 (44.7% of the sample) and the “older group” contained 89 children between the ages of 8 and 9 (55.3% of the total sample). Demographically the entire sample was 47.2% male and 52.8% female with 103 from Australia and the remaining 58 from Singapore. Results for each group were analysed following the study and compared for statistically significant differences between the groups. Because research has clearly indicated that open-ended questions have the potential to elicit different responses that forced-choice questions (Shaeffer, Lampron, Krosnick, Tompson, Visser, & Hanemman, 2004) the participants in each group were assigned to one of two modes. The first mode used open ended questions while the second mode relied on close ended questions. Regardless of the group and mode assigned, each participant was interviewed by a member of a PSY2231 Developmental Psychology class. Prior to the study, it was anticipated that both the group (age) of the participant and their mode (type of questioning) would lead to statistically significant differences between the level of scientific consistency that they exhibited. DISCUSSION Results from the study clearly indicate that, as expected, the age of the participants has a statistically significant difference on their level of scientific consistency. However, contrary to prior expectations, the manner of questioning, specifically open ended questions versus forced-answer questions did not result in a statistically significant difference between scientific consistencies. These results indicate that, while the age of the child has a relationship to their level of scientific consistency and thereby their understanding of the Earth, the manner in which a child is questioned is not related to this same level of scientific consistency. The significance of age as a relationship to worldview can be expressed as: 2 (1, N=161) = 15.124, p = 0.002. As the child’s level of scientific consistency in response to inquiry increases, this is an indicator of how they view and interact with the world. A higher level allows the child apply intellectual and hypothetical concepts to physical and observed phenomena despite the contextual nature of those phenomena. Their responses will be less opportunistic and the same concepts will consistently be used to define the same phenomena regardless of it occurring across differing times or contexts (Tytler, 2006). In addition to the unanticipated insignificance of questioning method, the actual levels of scientific consistency were also unexpected. For example, prior to this study, it was anticipated that the younger group would range in frequency from 32.2 consistent to 39.8 inconsistent creating a total range of 7.6. However, the actual results indicated a much lower frequency of consistent answers (20), a resultant much higher frequency of inconsistent answers (52), and a much higher range of 32 between the two frequencies. The older group also exhibited surprising results with its frequency of scientific consistency being 52, which is 12.2 higher than expected. In summary, the younger group was much more inconsistent than expected and the older group much more consistent than expected. This also indicates that there is a more profound increase in scientific consistency between the ages of 5 ½ and 8 ½ than the study has anticipated and that the increase is independent of how questions are posed to children. Having concluded this study, it is now apparent that the type of questioning used does not have a relationship to the level of scientific consistency exhibited by a child participant. With that information now available, time and resources that were expended to develop and implement two separate lines of questioning may have been better spent elsewhere. This is particularly significant given the large amount of “front end” time necessary to correctly compose close ended questions and the likewise large amount of “back end” time necessary to collate and analyse the results of open ended questions. Given that the nature of questioning has been determined statistically insignificant, a future study would be advised to employ the forced response questions already devised for the current research. These questions require significantly less time to collate and analyse and the time and effort has already been spent in their creation. Doing so will allow a future study to focus its efforts on other variables or analysis techniques that can shed additional light onto the question of childhood scientific consistency. For example, the current study employed two age groups, a “younger group” of 5-6 years and an “older group” of 8-9 years. Future research could expand upon this by recruiting children in additional age brackets, to ensure that the trend of increased scientific consistency with increased age continues beyond the initial findings. A second area for future study would be to increase the complexity of rating participant responses. In the current study, a child was deemed consistent if all answers were correct and was deemed inconsistent if a response was incorrect. While this procedure allowed for quickly analysing the data and categorizing the participants, future research may wish to analyse respondents based on a continuum. For example, a participant that is faced with ten questions, of which six are answered correctly, would be rated as 60% consistent. While this will add a level of complexity in the analysis and an associate increase in time and resources, it would also provided added insight into the actual level of scientific consistency exhibited by participants in each age grouping. Instead of merely being categorized as consistent or inconsistent, the actual level of consistency for each participant will be obtained and can then be used to compare participants in each group and across groups. Works Cited Hartup, W. W., & Weinberg, R. A. (2002). Childhood Psychology in Retrospect and Prospect: In Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Institute of Child Development, The Minnesota Symposia of Child Psychology. Mahwa: NK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Henning, J. (2009, January 28). Open-Ended Questions vs. Close-Ended Questions. Retrieved May 16, 2009, from Survey Research & Enterprise Feedback Management: http://blog.vovici.com/vovici_blog/2009/01/openended-questions-vs-closedended-questions.html Shaeffer, E., Lampron, S., Krosnick, J., Tompson, T., Visser, P., & Hanemman, M. W. (2004). A Comparison of Open vs. Closed Survey Questions for Valuing Environmental Goods. Phoenix, AZ: American Association for Public Opinion Research. Tytler, R. (2006). Consistency of children's use of science conceptions: Problems with the notion of "conceptual change". Research in Science Education , 338-347. Werner, E. E. (1979). Cross-Cultural Child Development: A View From the Planet Earth. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company. Zimmerman, C. (2005). The Development of Scientific Reasoning Skills: Why Psychologists Contribute to an Understanding of Elementary Science Learning. Normal, IL: National Research Council. Read More