Scientific and digital literacy as protective factors to misinformation susceptibility and vaccine uptake: Evidence from a nationally representative sample

Abstract

Scientific and digital literacy are two similar, but distinct constructs that should enable people to navigate the informational environment. Whilst scientific literacy is often defined as a grasp of elementary scientific facts, digital literacy is a set of habits regarding information consumption (e.g. checking the reliability of sources, triangulating the information). These two important skills should have a protective role when it comes to a. misinformation susceptibility, i.e. discerning factual from false information and to b. making informed health decisions. In this study, we firstly examined the prevalence of scientific literacy, digital literacy and misinformation detection ability on a probability sample nationally representative of Serbia (N = 1006). Second, we mapped out how these skills relate to each other and finally, how this skill set contributes to COVID-19 vaccination status. To this end, the participants completed the Civic Scientific and the Digital literacy scales, as well as the Misinformation Susceptibility test. We found that on average, the participants answered correctly on two thirds (M = 7.99 (SD = 1.91) out of 12) of the scientific literacy questions. As for digital literacy, an average of 51% of participants indicated that they rarely or never evaluate the information they consume online. Furthermore, the participants correctly identified, on average, a total of M = 4.01 (SD = 1.62) out of 8 pieces of news as either true or false. To test the interrelations of these constructs, we ran a regression with two types of literacy as predictors and misinformation detection as the outcome. The model was significant (F(2, 765) = 15.55, p < .001, Radj2 = .04), with both scientific (β = .138, t(764) = 3.807, p < .001) and digital (β = .113, t(764) = 3.113, p = .002) literacy contributing to its prediction in the expected direction. We further tested a model with misinformation detection, digital and scientific literacy as predictors and COVID-19 vaccination status as the outcome (F(3, 736) = 22.91, p < .001, Radj2 = .08). The only significant predictor in the model was misinformation detection ability (β = .290, t(735) = 8.065, p < .001), which was related to higher vaccine uptake. Overall, the levels of scientific literacy we observed are comparable to levels previously reported for EU countries. The results suggest that information appraisal skills are more important than basic scientific knowledge in guiding health decision making.