Measuring Trust in Science and Scientists: Italian Adaptation of the Trust in Science and Scientists Inventory

Journal title PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE
Author/s Roberto Fasanelli, Miriam Di Lisio, Alfonso Piscitelli
Publishing Year 2024 Issue 2024/1 Language Italian
Pages 15 P. 125-139 File size 264 KB
DOI 10.3280/PDS2024-001007
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In the era of scientific innovations that want, as part of evolution, an ever-increasing inclusion of human beings in its refinement process, the question of the dynamic be-tween truth and trust becomes increasingly pervasive. Trust in Science and Scientists can considerably influence the esteem and appreciation of scientific developments and dis-coveries and, no less, of scientists themselves. That trust, however, is a brute construct based on emotions, knowledge, beliefs, and interrelationships. From the literature analy-sis on the topic in our country, it was realized that no specific instrument is helpful for surveying Trust in Science and Scientists. Therefore, this study’s main objective is the preliminary adaptation of a scale aimed at assessing the trust attributed to the scientific community. The instrument proposed here originates from the scale validated by Nadel-son and collaborators (2014), which consists of 21 items. The scale was successfully tested on a non-probability sample of 201 subjects, and the implications and possible applications are discussed throughout this paper.

Keywords: Trust in Science, Trust in Scientists, scale translation, scale reliability, scale validation

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Roberto Fasanelli, Miriam Di Lisio, Alfonso Piscitelli, La misurazione della fiducia nella scienza e negli scienziati: adattamento italiano della scala Trust in Science and Scientists in "PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE" 1/2024, pp 125-139, DOI: 10.3280/PDS2024-001007