SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) – Along with the pandemic have come different opinions about the science of COVID-19 and who believes what.
That has lead students at Western Iowa Tech to begin researching what factors play a role in how people perceive scientific the data surrounding COVID-19.
Every two years, members of Phi Theta Kappa at WIT research broad topics. This year, that topic looks into how and why people form opinions about the data surrounding the pandemic.
“Someone’s race, their ethnicity, every little factor you could think of actually influenced how someone perceived that data and where they fell on the spectrum of yeah, this data is accurate I’m going to follow it or no, I don’t really buy this,” Eleanor Popeney, Chapter President of Beta Zeta Mu, said.
Popeney said the idea to create the study came from controversies over the effectiveness of mask wearing, and they wanted to know why some people believed in certain facts and others didn’t.
But, a pyschology instructor at WIT said trying to understand the reasoning behind it takes an entire field of study.
“Scientific data, again, there’s a reason why not all of us took chemistry or majored in chemistry or engineering. There are difficult concepts and again humans like to be comfortable, and we like things to be simple,” said Dr. Rhonda Briggs.
After several months of research, Popeney said data shows socio-economics played a major role in how people perceived scientific data.
“We tended to see with the higher socio-economic status and the higher education in general people tended to accept the scientific data, whereas on the opposite end of the spectrum more people tended to reject it,” Popeney added.
She said being more open-minded is what she hopes people will take away from the study.
