Using a Concept Inventory to Assess the Reasoning Component of Citizen-Level Science Literacy: Results from a 17,000-Student Study.

After articulating 12 concepts for the reasoning component of citizen-level science literacy and restating these as assessable student learning outcomes (SLOs), we developed a valid and reliable assessment instrument for addressing the outcomes with a brief 25-item science literacy concept inventory (SLCI). In this paper, we report the results that we obtained from assessing the citizen-level science literacy of 17,382 undergraduate students, 149 graduate students, and 181 professors. We address only findings at or above the 99.