'Perceived Scientific Consensus and Societal Trust' (AsPredicted #68019)
Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has one author.
Pre-registered on 2021/06/08 - 06:22 PM (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? No, no data have been collected for this study yet.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? I anticipate that perceived scientific consensus (PSC) on Covid-19 claims will be associated with lower trust in individuals who are not wearing masks.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. Participants will be given 10 items describing trust (e.g., People who are not wearing a face mask make me feel safe). Participants will answer those questions on a scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.
I will collapse these items into a single scale reflecting trust, assuming the scale is reliable (alpha > .70).
CORE IV: Perceived Scientific Consensus (PSC)
Perceived scientific consensus is based on 24 practices (12 that generally have consensus; 12 that do not) and participants will indicate whether each of those practices is supported by scientific evidence (1 = no evidence; no consensus; 7 = clear evidence; high consensus).
I expect that each of those sets of PSC (12-item high consensus AND 12-item low consensus) will form their own scale. If not, the relationship between the items and trust will be assessed individually.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? Not applicable
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. I will conduct regression to examine whether participants' perceived scientific consensus impacts their trust perceptions.
Assuming the PSC items can be collapsed into two scales (12-item high consensus; 12-item low consensus), they will be used as independent predictors of the new normal support.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. There are 4 attention check questions (example: Please select 'three'). If participants miss more than one attention check questions, their responses will be removed from analyses.
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. 220 participants will be recruited based on available funding.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) Participants will also complete the following:
10-item belief in science scale (Farias et al., 2013)
3 items reflecting participants' belief in conspiracy theories surrounding Covid-19.
3 items reflecting participants' compliance with Covid-19 mandates (masks, physical distancing, contact-tracing).
3 items capturing participants' statistic literacy
1 item capturing participants' concern with contracting Covid-19
1 item political ideology
Core estimation of Covid-19 risks (e.g., % of people who are hospitalized).
Demographic variables (gender; age)
Those variables will be examined as potential predictors of trust.
