1. Exploring how values influence undergraduate informal and formal decision-making about a wildlife conservation issue Ashley Alred & Jenny Dauer School of Natural Resources, ashley.alred@huskers.unl.edu How do you make a decision? Science education is key to developing scientifically literate students who can incorporate science into their daily decision-making and civic participation. In a course designed to support formal decision-making around complex issues, we investigated values in two ways: 1) value orientations that are tied to beliefs, personal norms and behavior (Stern, 2000) and 2) students' own expression of their values in the criteria that they write in their unit assessments. Do students’ value orientations predict their unstructured Pretest and Posttest opinions or their structured, formal decision-making “Choice” regarding mountain lion management? Classroom Context Students were STEM and non-STEM majors in a required introductory undergraduate science literacy course that explored several controversial socioscientific issues. The Controversy: Mountain Lion Conservation Native to Nebraska, mountain lions were extirpated from the state in the late 1800s and were not seen again until 1991. Today, there is a small resident population of 22-33 individuals. The first and only managed hunting season for mountain lions was held in 2014, and it was highly controversial (NE Game & Parks website). Data Collection The study sample included 110 students in two lecture sections (n=109 and 114). We collected students’: Pretest/Posttest The text from the pretest/posttest included some framing of the problem context, then: 1) What do you think should be done about this problem? Should we hunt mountain lions in Nebraska? 2) Why should we do it/not do it? Value Orientations We used a value orientation survey (De Groot and Steg 2008), developed based on the Value-Belief-Norm theory (Stern, 2000), to calculate where students lie along three value orientation scales that reflect how egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric they are. de Groot and Steg (2008) found that subjects who received high biospheric and low egoistic value orientation mean scores were significantly more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Thus, we calculated the difference between students’ egoistic and biospheric value orientation scores to create a fourth “Ego-Bio” score to see if this was predictive of their informal and formal decisions (Figure 1). This score ranged from -2.00 to 5.25. Unit Assessments Students 7 decision-making steps designed to support students’ formal decision-making at the end of the mountain lion unit. We analyzed students’ Ecological Criteria (Step 3) and Choice (Step 6) from their unit assessment decision-making framework (Table 1). Teaching Implications & Future Research We believe that value orientations are more predictive of the Pretest decision compared to the Choice or Posttest because prior to instruction, students may rely more upon value-based heuristics that indicate students’ informal decision-making. As a result of the class, students were less likely in their Choice and Posttest to give a solely value-based judgement. We argue that formal decision-making instruction is a tool that can help students navigate the myriad of diverse considerations influencing their decision-making process, weigh the options appropriately, and ultimately make a more holistic choice. This analysis showed that inclusion of ecological criteria did not predict the students' management choice on their unit assessments. The lack of relationship may be due to several possibilities: 1) students did not represent their concern for ecosystems in their criteria statements, 2) students did not weigh all of their criteria effectively 3) students placed more weight on other criteria in their final choice or 4) students reverted to an informal value-based judgement. Future research involves further inquiry into the type of reasoning students provided for their management decisions. Additional qualitative exploration of a subset of students will provide a more holistic story of patterns in students’ values, management choice, and reasoning. Research Goal 1: Value orientations and decision-making Research Goal 2: Ecological criteria and formal decision-making Figure 1. The Ego-Bio Value Orientation score predicted management choice in the Pretest decision (multinomial logistic regression, p<0.05) and somewhat predicted management choice in the Unit Assessment (p<0.1) and the Posttest decision (p<0.1). Table 1. Unit Assessment Decision-Making Framework Each student completed an in-class structured 7-step decision- making framework assignment adapted from Ratcliffe (1997) as their first unit assessment. 1.Define the Problem: What is the crux of the problem as you see it? 2.Options: What are the options? (List the possible solutions to the problem.) 3.Criteria: How are you going to choose between these options? (Explain important considerations and what is va 4.Information: Do you have enough information about each option to evaluate based on your criteria? What scientific evidence is involved in this problem? What additional information do you need to help you make the decision? 5.Analysis: Discuss each option weighed against the criteria. What are the tradeoffs of each option? 6.Choice: Which option do you choose? 7.Review: What do you think of the decision you have made? How could you improve the way you made the decision? Table 2. The inclusion of ecological criteria (Step 3) in the 7-step decision-making framework (for both Food Web and Small Populations) was not predictive of management choice (Step 6) in the unit assessment. References De Groot & Steg (2008) Environment and Behavior, 40(3), 330–354 Nebraska Game and Parks (2016) http://outdoornebraska.gov/mountainlions/ Ratcliffe (1997) Int J of Sci Educ, 19: 167-182. Stern (2000) Journal of Social Issues 56:407-424. 3. Criteria: How are you going to choose between these options? (Explain important considerations and what is valued in an outcome.) Do students’ inclusion of ecological criteria in their structured decision-making predict their conservation management choice? Pretest Unit Assessment Choice Posttest Counts of students who included concern for mountain lion impacts on food webs in their criteria Criteria Categories Increasing specificity Student Mean Criteria Score Decision Categories 0 None 1 Vague Eco 2 Specific Eco Yes: Hunt throughout state 451180.42 Yes: Hunt outside of breeding areas 9040.62 No: Do not hunt currently 12240.56 No: Do not hunt or kill 12030.40 Total781319110 Counts of students who included concern for mountain lion small population size in their criteria Criteria Categories Increasing specificity Student Mean Criteria Score Decision Categories 0 None 1 Might go extinct 2 Inbreeding Yes: Hunt throughout state 501310.23 Yes: Hunt outside of breeding areas 9310.38 No: Do not hunt currently 13320.39 No: Do not hunt or kill 11310.33 Total83225110 Contrasting types of decision-making Informal decision making Used to make thousands of decisions on a daily basis Uses emotive, intuitive and cognitive reasoning Does not notice uncertainty Subject to cognitive biases Based on “value judgments” Formal decision-making Most important to use with complex problems Uses deliberate and rational reasoning Notices uncertainty Tools used reduce cognitive biases Based on optimizing multiple values