The theory of planned behavior and the prediction of pre-service biology teachers' intention to teach evolution

We developed the project to identify and analyze variables that promote or hinder prospective biology teachers’ intentions to teach evolution. We adopted the model of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). We extended it to include additional variables described by teacher education research as key determinants of behavioral intention to teach evolution. We initially hypothesized that attitudes toward teaching evolution, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, personal religious beliefs, perceived usefulness, and knowledge about evolution would determine a person’s behavioral intentions. To test the hypotheses, we developed an online questionnaire and conducted a quantitative cross-sectional survey in the field of teacher education. The data included information on N = 309 participants. Because we initially analyzed the data using a two-stage structural equation model (SEM), we uploaded two data files that were created in subprocesses of our original analyses (for more information, see the original publication). The dataset “data3” contains 77 variables and has missing values. Since we wanted to use complete data for the SEM, we trimmed the data set “data3” to include only the 67 variables necessary for the SEM, then applied an expectation-maximum (EM) algorithm with multiple imputations, and obtained the data set “data4”.