Establishing an everyday scientific reasoning scale to learn how non-scientists reason with science

Scientific concepts and core ideas are fundamental for scientific inquiry and research. However, they are not always understood by non-scientists who encounter science in the media, conversations with friends, and other daily contexts. To assess how non-scientists reason with science in daily life, we extend the work described by Drummond and Fischhoff by developing an everyday scientific reasoning scale and demonstrating its ability to predict the use and application of daily scientific information. This article features three studies describing the development, validation, and use of the everyday scientific reasoning scale. Findings demonstrate an association between respondents’ scores on the everyday science reasoning scale and their level of education and suggest that using daily scenarios for framing science facilitates the process of understanding scientific concepts. These results have important implications for communicating science in society and engaging diverse populations with science.