Abstract:

Background:
Over the past 20 years a number of educational ‘literacies‘ have become recognised as learning outcomes in schools and universities, e.g. media literacy, digital literacy and information literacy. The term ‘psychological literacy’ relates to an individual’s ability to apply an understanding of psychology to their everyday personal, social and work lives. The greatest development and application of psychological literacy has been within undergraduate psychology education, however we propose that an understanding of psychology is relevant to students across other disciplines and within schools. Indeed, many undergraduate courses (such as Media, English, Law, Biology, Health and Business) include elements of psychology and develop psychological skills. However, so far there has been no evaluation of the levels of psychological literacy across demographic variables.

Method:
We collected data from a wide range of students to allow comparison of five dimensions of psychological literacy across demographic variables. Students responded to adverts placed on university websites and through social media and 187 students completed an online survey. The sample comprised 128 females and 59 males, with ages ranging from 17 to 52 years (mean 23 years). Students came from five disciplines: Business, Health, IT and Law and Psychology. Education level was categorised into pre-degree, undergraduate degree and post-graduate. Statistical tests compared these demographic variables across five dimensions of psychological literacy.

Results:
The results for the five dimensions follow:
(i) responses to an ‘integrity‘ scale, measuring ethical beliefs, showed no differences between discipline, age, or gender but a significant effect for educational level; such that post-graduate students indicated higher scores than both pre-degree and undergraduate students;
(ii) responses to a ‘confidence in evaluating information‘ scale showed a significant effect according to discipline, such that Business students scored significantly lower than all other disciplines. While Psychology students showed the highest level, this was not statistically significant. Also, this scale showed a significant effect according to age, such that younger students possessed significantly less confidence than older students;
(iii) analysis of student’s perceptions of their own psychological literacy showed no significant differences across discipline, age or education, but there was a significant gender difference, such that females scored significantly lower than males;
(iv) analysis of the perceived knowledge of basic concepts and principles in psychology showed that discipline significantly differentiated high and low levels, with Business students showing the highest levels, rather than psychology students;
(v) a set of statements measuring experience of interactions with people from diverse backgrounds revealed no significant differences between students.

Summary:
The meanings of these findings will be discussed in the presentation. The results are surprising in that psychology students did not show higher levels of many of the dimensions included within the concept of psychological literacy. However, the data were skewed in that the majority of the sample were female, at undergraduate level, studying psychology. Further data needs to be collected from the under-represented demographic groups (i.e. more males, students from a wider age range and from more disciplines).

Keywords:

Psychological literacy, demographic, disciplines, undergraduates, diversity, ethics, confidence.