Hendrick, Tamara
The potential of Item Response Theory to predict social acceptance of new technologies: Bionanotechnology
Tamara Hendrick (PhD student)
Marketing and Consumer Behaviour Group, room 5016
Wageningen University
P.O.Box 8130, 6700 EW WAGENINGEN
Phone: + 31 (0) 317 48 3636 / 4452 (secretary)
E-mail: Tamara Hendrinck
Project: Project at Wageningen University
Project running from: 1 June 2008 – 1 June 2012
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Lynn J. Frewer, Dr. Hilde Tobi, and Dr. Arnout R. H. Fischer (Twente University)
Summary of project
A recent technological development of potential benefit to the agri-food sector in particular, and society more generally, is nanobiotechnology. However, for this technology to reach its full, it must first be accepted by society. Public attitudes towards nanobiotechnology are likely to be effective predictors of acceptance of both technology and its applications, are therefore relevant to its strategic development and commercialisation.
However measuring current attitudes towards nanobiotechnology proves difficult, because existing attitudes tend to be uncrystalised. In addition, existing methodologies are unsuccessful at predicting these attitudes where these circumstances apply. A statistical model that can predict individual attitudes towards different applications of nanobiotechnology is the item response theory (IRT).
An attractive property of IRT is that it is invariant, making the model independent of group responses and test items. Application of IRT will enable attitudinal assessment to occur for different groups of respondents or acrossdifferent bionanotechnology applications.The objective of the research is to improve predictions of social acceptance of emerging technologies and their applications by developing a valid and reliable methodological approach to instrument development. An important research activity relates to the measurement of attitudes towards nanobiotechnology and its applications.
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