"That's an Interesting Finding, but...:" Postsecondary Students' Interpretations of Research Findings.

Abstract

Two studies examined individuals’ open-ended interpretations of research findings in the context of Deanna Kuhn’s model of theory-evidence coordination. The first study compared undergraduate and graduate students’ explanations and evaluations of research findings in familiar and unfamiliar domains. The second study considered the role of epistemic beliefs and thinking dispositions on less and more advanced college students’ interpretations of research findings. Results from both studies indicated that some people tended to focus more on the evaluation of evidence presented to them while others accepted the evidence at face value and focused on explanation, attempting to “make sense” of the research findings in terms of what they already knew (prior theories and beliefs). Educational experience was related to people’s interpretation of the research findings. More advanced students tended to describe and critically evaluate data while less advanced students explained the data without considering their quality. Additionally, there were differences in the way students with different majors/areas of study interpreted research findings, with history and engineering students providing more evaluations of the findings than psychology students. Finally, correlational and regression analyses indicated that statistical/methodological training, general intelligence and sophisticated thinking dispositions were correlated with people’s tendency to evaluate research findings.