![]() Main outcome variables were user experience (i.e., perceived accessibility, perceived understanding, and perceived empowerment) and knowledge acquisition, as well as understanding and knowledge of the quality of evidence. Eight PLS of meta-analyses from different areas of psychology were investigated as study materials. To develop empirically validated guidelines on writing PLS, two randomized controlled studies including large samples stratified for education status, age, and gender (N Study1 = 2,288 and N Study2 = 2,211) were conducted. We specifically focused on approaches for (1) handling technical terms, (2) communicating the quality of evidence by explaining the methodological approach of meta-analyses, (3) explaining how synthesized studies operationalized their research questions, (4) handling statistical terms, (5) structuring PLS, and (6) explaining complex meta-analytic designs. In this article, we present two experimental studies investigating six characteristics of PLS for psychological meta-analyses. Despite the societal relevance of making psychological research findings available to the public, our empirical knowledge on how to write PLS of psychology studies is still scarce. Plain language summaries (PLS) aim to communicate research findings to laypersons in an easily understandable manner. Implications for health communication and science communication, limitations, and future directions are discussed. Finally, we found no evidence that seeking scientific information on social media had detrimental consequences for the attitude towards science. Further, valuing common sense over science was related to seeking less scientific information on official websites, suggesting that this belief, in particular, may drive mis- and disinformation and could be a promising target for interventions. Beliefs about this value are related to trust in science and trust in scientific information and to positive and negative evaluations of scientific controversy and complexity. Overall, our network analysis revealed that especially the perceived value of science for curbing the pandemic is central to the attitude towards science. For this analysis, we utilized data from a German probability sample (N = 1,009), the “Science Barometer”, collected during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We here contribute to this understanding by conceptualizing and analyzing the attitude toward science as a psychological network. This would allow harvesting the benefits of preprints, such as faster and more accessible science communication while reducing concerns about public overconfidence in the presented findings.Ī better understanding of the public attitude towards science could be crucial to tackle the spread of mis- and disinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. In sum, our research demonstrates that even a short explanation of the concept of preprints and their lack of peer-review allows non-scientists who evaluate scientific findings to adjust their credibility perception accordingly. This explanation again allowed non-scientists to differentiate between preprints and the peer-reviewed literature. In Study 5, we developed and tested a shortened version of this explanation which we recommend adding to preprints. However, an explanation of the peer-review process reduces the credibility of preprints (Studies 3 and 4). ![]() Studies 1 and 2 showed that without an explanation, non-scientists perceive research findings published as preprints as equally credible as findings published as peer-reviewed articles. Across 5 studies in Germany and the US, we investigated whether this concern is warranted and whether this problem can be solved by providing non-scientists with a brief explanation of preprints and the peer-review process. Many researchers hence worry that these preprints reach non-scientists, such as practitioners, journalists, and policymakers, who might be unable to differentiate them from the peer-reviewed literature. Preprints are not peer-reviewed and thus did not undergo the established scientific quality control process. A growing number of psychological research findings are initially published as preprints.
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