A new study that was based on 35-years of national opinion surveys shows that the level of acceptance of evolution is well above the halfway mark in the United States.
Jon D. Miller, a lead researcher at the Institute for Social Research at Michigan, stated that "from 1985 to 2010, there was an statistical dead heat between acceptance or rejection of evolution." "But acceptance grew and became the dominant position in 2016," said Jon D. Miller, lead researcher at the Institute for Social Research.
The study, which examined data for 35 years, consistently identified three aspects of education as key to acceptance of evolution -- civic science literacy and taking college science courses.
Co-author Mark Ackerman is a researcher at Michigan Engineering and the U-M School of Information and Michigan Medicine. He said that nearly twice as many Americans had a college degree in 2018 than in 1988. It's difficult to get a college degree without having some respect for science.
Researchers analyzed a number of national surveys funded by the National Science Foundations and several biennial surveys by the National Science Board. They also examined a series of surveys that focused on adult civic literacy, which was funded by NASA. These national samples of U.S. adult respondents were asked to respond or disagree to this statement, which was made in 1985.
A series of surveys revealed that Americans were equally divided over the issue of evolution between 1985 and 2007. Miller's 2005 study on acceptance of evolution in 34 countries led to lower scores than the United States. Only Turkey scored 27% less than the United States. However, the number of Americans who agree with this statement has increased from 40% to 54% over the past ten years (2019).
According to the current study, religious fundamentalism was the most important factor in the rejection of evolution. Their numbers have declined slightly over the past decade but approximately 30% of Americans are still religious fundamentalists, according to the study. Even those with the highest scores on the scale of religious extremism moved toward accepting evolution. Their score rose from 8% to 32% in 2019
Miller predicted that religious fundamentalism will continue to hinder public acceptance of evolution.
He said that such beliefs were not only persistent but also increasingly politicized, pointing out the widening gap between Republican acceptance of evolution and Democratic acceptance.
In 2019, 34% of conservative Republicans accepted evolution, compared to 83% for liberal Democrats.
Public Understanding of Science published the study.
Miller and Ackerman were not the only authors. Glenn Branch and Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, Beln Laspra of University of Oviedo (Spanish), Carmelo Polino of University of Oviedo & Centre Redes (Argentina) and Jordan Huffaker of U-M.
