U.S. public perceptions of human evolution as an explanation for racial group differences
I posted to OSF data, code, and a report for my unpublished "Public perceptions of human evolution as explanations for racial group differences" [sic] project that was from a survey that YouGov ran for me in 2017, using funds from Illinois State University New Faculty Start-up Support and the Illinois State University College of Arts and Sciences. The report describes results from preregistered analyses, but below I'll highlight key results.
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The key item asked participants whether God's design and/or evolution, or neither, helped cause a particular racial difference:
Some racial groups have [...] compared to other racial groups. Select ALL of the reasons below that you think help cause this difference:
□ Differences in how God designed these racial groups
□ Genetic differences that evolved between these racial groups
○ None of the above
Participants were randomly assigned to receive one racial difference in the part of the item marked [...] above. Below are the racial differences asked about, along with the percentage assigned to that item who selected only the "evolved" response option:
70% a greater risk for certain diseases
55% darker skin on average
54% more Olympic-level runners
49% different skull shapes on average
26% higher violent crime rates on average
24% higher math test scores on average
21% lower math test scores on average
18% lower violent crime rates on average
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Another item on the survey (discussed at this post) asked about evolution. The reports that I posted for these items removed all or a lot of the discussion and citation of literature from the manuscripts that I had submitted to journals but were rejected, in case I can use that material for a later manuscript.
You're doing good work. As an average vague I am curious though. How do you decide what to questions to propose? What is your thought process or method?
Thanks, Jezebelle. I think that a good question to research is an interesting and/or important question that hasn't been asked at all or recently enough, or (more commonly for me, I think) an interesting and/or important question that hasn't been researched adequately. The above post is in the first group because the recent survey research on genetic attributions of racial group differences that I was aware of (since Apostle et al. 1983) did not differentiate beliefs about the origin of genetic racial differences, even though I think that it's plausible that belief in genetic racial differences designed by God would have different downstream consequences than belief in genetic racial differences that have occurred through evolution.