Designing an online training to enhance attitude towards handling scientific press releases

This educational design study examines how the attitude of journalists towards handling scientific press releases, distinguished in ‘receiving’, ‘scanning’ and ‘thoroughly reading’ scientific press releases, can be enhanced through online training. For this, need, context, learner, learner task, content and literature analyses combined with formative evaluation have led to the development of a custom-made online training. Key in this study is ‘attitude’ as a component of the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991). A questionnaire was developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the training on attitude towards handling scientific press releases. Significant differences were found on items regarding ‘scanning scientific press releases’ and on ‘affective appraisal of scientific press releases’. However, no other significant differences were found, raising questions about the sample size, the training design and the fit between the questionnaires, the training content, the training design and attitude.