TY - JOUR T1 - Changes in Acceptance of Evolution and Associated Factors during a Year of Introductory Biology: The Shifting Impacts of Biology Knowledge, Politics, Religion, Demographics, and Understandings of the Nature of Science JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/280479 SP - 280479 AU - Ryan D.P. Dunk AU - Jason R. Wiles Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/13/280479.abstract N2 - A great deal of recent research has identified many factors influencing student acceptance of biological evolution, but few of these factors have been measured in a longitudinal context of changing knowledge and acceptance of evolution over a period of instruction. This study investigates factors previously associated with evolution acceptance as well as other potential factors among students over the course of a year-long majors and nonmajors introductory biology sequence at a private, research-intensive university in the northeastern United States. Acceptance of evolution was measured using the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) instrument, and other factors were measured using well-established instruments and a demographic survey. As expected given the context, evolution was widely accepted (71% of our sample scored in the “high” or “very high” acceptance range) among the population, but 160 students were in the very low to moderate acceptance range. Over the course of the academic year, normalized change regressions revealed that as knowledge of the Nature of Science (NoS) increased, evolution acceptance increased (R2 = .378, p << 0.001). Increasing levels of genetic literacy (R2 = .214, p << 0.001) and Evolutionary Knowledge (R2 = .177, p << 0.001) were also significantly associated with increases in acceptance of evolution. To our knowledge, this study is also the first to examine the longitudinal effect of combining various factors into unified working models of acceptance of evolution. From fall to spring, the influence of student knowledge of NoS on evolution acceptance increased, as did the influence of genetic literacy. Conversely, the influence of religious variables decreased, as did the influence of political inclinations and race/ethnicity. Our results indicate that as students learn more about the nature of science, they may rely more on scientific explanations for natural phenomena. This study also underscores the importance of using longitudinal, multifactorial analyses to understand acceptance of evolution. ER -