Science Fascination
Measures curiosity, interest, and positive feelings toward science.
May help answer: Does the program strengthen participants' interest in science?
Learn moreBuild a stronger evaluation in a few guided steps
The STEM Impact Hub helps you move from an evaluation question to a participant survey and useful results without building every part of the process from the ground up.
Use this page to see more about how the STEM Impact Hub works, choose the right survey scales, plan your study, and purchase access. And remember, if you have questions, we are happy to talk.
Is the STEM Impact Hub Right for You?
The Hub is designed to help formal and informal science or STEM learning organizations and evaluators understand participants' experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and other outcomes related to science or STEM learning.
It is a strong fit when you want to:
- Understand whether participants feel interested in, capable of, or connected to STEM
- Learn how participants experienced a program, activity, or exhibit
- Measure outcomes such as science identity, STEM belonging, fascination, values, competency beliefs, or environmental decision-making
- Compare results before and after an experience
- Gather evidence for program improvement, strategic planning, communication, or funding
- Use established measures while reducing the time required to build, score, and report on a survey
The Hub is not designed to:
- Measure participants' mastery of specific content
- Make high-stakes decisions about individual participants
- Assign grades or determine student placement
- Evaluate educator competence
- Prove that a program caused an outcome without an evaluation design capable of supporting that conclusion
Want to discuss more about how the STEM Impact Hub might support your evaluation question or organization? Schedule an introductory meeting with our team.
How to Use the STEM Impact Hub
Define What You Want to Learn
Begin with the decisions your evaluation needs to inform. A focused evaluation question will help you choose the right measures and avoid asking participants questions you do not need.
Examples include:
- Do participants feel more confident doing STEM after the program?
- Do participants feel that they belong in STEM?
- How engaged were visitors with an exhibit?
- Did the experience affect participants' interest in STEM careers?
- How do participants' outcomes vary across program groups or experiences?
Before you begin, identify:
- The program or experience you want to evaluate
- Who will take the survey
- What outcomes matter most
- When participants can complete the survey
- How you plan to use and share the findings
- If you want to make any comparisons within your population, like across cohorts or program dates
Choose a Study Design
The Survey Creation Tool will ask you to select the approach that best fits your evaluation.
One Time or Post-Only
Participants complete the survey after the experience. This approach can help you understand participants' experiences, attitudes, and outcomes at the end of a program. This is helpful when your questions are about differences within your participants, like do our morning groups perform the same as our afternoon groups.
Consider post-only when: you are evaluating a short or drop-in experience, you cannot survey participants before the program, or you want feedback about the experience or the participant's level of engagement.
Traditional Pre/Post
Participants complete a survey before and after the experience. Responses can be compared to examine change over time. This is helpful when you want to measure a change in participants from before to after the experience.
Consider pre/post when: you can administer the survey at both points and your evaluation question focuses on change. Participant IDs may be used to connect pre- and post-responses without collecting participant names. You can also take this approach with drop-in visitors and have some take the pre before entering and others take the post after the experience.
Retrospective Pre/Post
Participants only complete a survey at the end of the experience and in that survey are invited to reflect on how they see themselves both before the program and now after the program. This can be helpful when the participants may not have sufficient experience in a subject to assess their own attitudes or levels of understanding until after the program when they have learned more.
Consider retrospective pre/post when: a traditional pre-survey is not practical or when the experience may change how participants understand the outcome being measured. This approach requires measures specifically prepared for retrospective use.
Describe Your Program and Participants
Complete the guided Survey Creation Tool with information about your organization and program. Depending on your project, you will be asked about:
- Organization and program name
- Learning setting
- Program content or STEM focus
- Participant age range or grade level
- Program duration and participant contact hours
- Expected number of participant responses
- Study design
- Whether participant IDs are needed
- Demographic questions to include
This information helps the Hub build the right survey, generate a report that includes this information about your program, and, when available, identify useful comparison groups. This section of the Survey Creation Tool is critical, as what you type into this section will be included in the report the Impact Hub generates. This allows you to communicate findings with external stakeholders.
Select Survey Measures
Choose measures that directly align with your evaluation questions. Each measure contains a related group of questions designed to assess a specific concept, such as STEM fascination or sense of belonging.
Keep the participant experience in mind. A shorter, focused survey usually produces better-quality responses than a survey that attempts to measure every possible outcome. We suggest limiting the survey to 3-5 outcome scales. A good rule of thumb is to think each scale you include will increase the survey length by 5-10 minutes.
Check out the Survey Measure Library below to explore your options.
Receive and Review Your Survey
After you complete all elements of the Survey Creation Tool, the Hub creates your participant survey and provides the link or links needed for your study design.
Before distributing the survey:
- Confirm that the program name and instructions are correct
- Test the survey link
- Review the survey
- Make a plan for assigning participant IDs if using a pre/post design
- Decide when, where, and how participants will complete the survey
Contact the STEM Impact Hub team if something needs to be changed or you have a question about implementation.
Administer the Survey
Share the participant survey during the planned administration window. Whenever possible, set aside time during the program for participants to complete it. This typically leads to a stronger response rate than asking participants to respond later on their own.
During data collection:
- Give participants clear, neutral instructions
- Explain that participation is voluntary when applicable
- Protect participant privacy
- Avoid collecting names or other identifying information unless your Human Subjects Research approved evaluation plan requires it
- Use the assigned participant IDs consistently when connecting multiple surveys
- Monitor response totals and follow up as appropriate
- Do not distribute survey links beyond the intended participant group
Close Data Collection and Request Your Report
When data collection is complete, go back to the email you received with the survey link and click on the link to your admin portal. In that portal you can request a CSV file with your data and a report of your results.
Put Your Findings to Work
Use your results to:
- Identify program strengths and opportunities for improvement
- Support planning and resource decisions
- Communicate outcomes to staff, participants, partners, and funders
- Strengthen future evaluation questions
- Contribute to a broader understanding of STEM learning across settings
The STEM Impact Hub provides evidence to support decision-making. Your knowledge of the program, participants, and local context remains essential when interpreting the findings.
Ready to get started?
Choose Survey Measures That Match Your Goals
Survey measures work best when they align with both your evaluation question and the kind of experience participants had. For example, a short exhibit interaction may be well suited to measures of engagement or exhibit feedback, while a sustained program may reasonably examine outcomes such as identity, belonging, fascination, or competency beliefs.
The availability of a measure may depend on participant age, study design, language, or survey format.
Survey Measure Library
Science Activation Scales
Science Competency Beliefs
Measures participants' confidence in their ability to engage in and succeed at science-related activities.
May help answer: Do participants believe they can do science?
Learn moreScience Values
Measures the importance participants place on science and its usefulness in their lives and society.
May help answer: Do participants see science as valuable and relevant?
Learn moreScience Identity
Measures the extent to which participants see themselves as science people or feel that science is part of who they are.
May help answer: Does the experience strengthen participants' science identity?
Learn moreScientific Sensemaking: Monkeys
Uses a science scenario to examine practices involved in making sense of evidence, such as interpreting data, considering explanations, and reasoning about a scientific problem.
May help answer: How do participants engage in scientific reasoning and sensemaking?
Technical report [link to come]STEM Activation Scales
STEM Fascination
Measures interest in and positive feelings toward STEM, curiosity about STEM subjects, and motivation to develop STEM-related skills and ideas.
May help answer: Are participants increasingly interested in exploring and learning about STEM?
Learn moreSTEM Competency Beliefs
Measures participants' beliefs about their ability to take part and succeed in STEM learning and activities.
May help answer: Do participants feel capable and confident in STEM?
Learn moreSTEM Values
Measures the importance participants place on STEM and the extent to which they see STEM as useful for their goals and for society.
May help answer: Do participants see STEM as meaningful, relevant, or useful?
Learn moreSTEM Innovation Stance
Measures participants' orientation toward creating, experimenting, solving problems, and trying new ideas.
May help answer: Are participants willing to design, test, and persist with new ideas?
Learn moreEmerging STEM Activation
Measures early signs of interest, confidence, values, and engagement related to STEM among younger learners.
May help answer: How are younger participants beginning to connect with STEM?
Learn moreSense of Belonging and Career in Science or STEM
Career Interest Questionnaire
Measures level of interest and commitment in pursuing a career in science.
May help answer: How interested in pursuing a career in science are participants?
Learn moreCareer Preferences
Measures youths' affinity for STEM-related work, certainty about their future occupation, and specific career goals. It captures emerging STEM interests even before students choose a particular career.
May help answer: How interested in a STEM career is a respondent and how certain are they in their interest?
Learn moreSense of Belonging in Science
Measures whether participants feel accepted, included, and connected in science environments and communities.
May help answer: Do participants feel that they belong in science?
Technical report [if available]Sense of Belonging in STEM
Measures whether participants feel accepted, included, and connected within STEM spaces and communities.
May help answer: Do participants feel that there is a place for them in STEM?
Learn more [link to come]Agency, Action, and Environmental Connection
Nature Relatedness: Comfort in Nature
Measures participants' sense of comfort and connection in natural environments.
May help answer: Does the experience affect how comfortable and connected participants feel in nature?
Learn more [link to come]Environmentally Aware Decision-Making
Measures the extent to which participants consider environmental impacts when making decisions.
May help answer: Are participants more likely to consider the environment in their choices?
Learn more [link to come]Perceptions of Science
Measures participants' views and impressions of science.
May help answer: How do participants think and feel about science?
Learn more [link to come]Perceived Behavioral Control
Measures whether participants believe they have the ability and opportunity to take a particular action.
May help answer: Do participants feel capable of acting on what they learned?
Learn more [link to come]Critical Consciousness
Measures participants' awareness of social conditions and their sense that they can help create change.
May help answer: Does the experience strengthen participants' understanding of inequity and capacity for action?
Learn more [link to come]Math Dispositions and Perceptions
Attitudes Toward AI and Probability
Measures attitudes related to artificial intelligence and probability concepts.
May help answer: How do participants think and feel about AI and ideas involving probability?
Learn more [link to come]Math Values
Measures the importance participants place on mathematics and its usefulness for their goals and lives.
May help answer: Do participants see mathematics as useful and meaningful?
Learn more [link to come]Math Competency Beliefs
Measures participants' beliefs about their ability to engage in and succeed at mathematics.
May help answer: Do participants feel capable and confident in mathematics?
Learn more [link to come]Engagement in Activity and Feedback on Museum Exhibit
Engagement
Measures a learner's focus, participation, and persistence during a specific science activity. It assesses behavioral engagement, cognitive attention and information processing, and positive, high-arousal emotional engagement.
May help answer: How engaged were participants during this specific activity?
Technical reportMuseum Exhibit Feedback Scale
Measures visitors' responses to and perceptions of a museum exhibit.
May help answer: How did visitors experience and respond to the exhibit?
Learn more [link to come]Participant Background Questions
Optional participant questions can help describe who responded and examine whether experiences differed across groups. Available questions may include:
- Age or grade level
- Gender identity
- Racial or ethnic identity
- Parent or caregiver education
- Participant IDs for connecting pre- and post-responses
- Program- or activity-specific questions
- Open-ended response questions
Collect only the information needed for your evaluation. Demographic findings should be interpreted carefully, and results for small groups should be protected to preserve participant privacy.
Measures in Development or Being Prepared for the Hub
The STEM Impact Hub's measure library will continue to grow. Contact the STEM Impact Hub team if you need a measure that is not currently listed in the Survey Builder.
Why Use the STEM Impact Hub Instead of Building Your Own Survey?
Designing a strong survey takes more than writing questions. It requires finding appropriate measures, checking wording and response options, building survey logic, testing the participant experience, scoring responses, analyzing results, and communicating findings.
The STEM Impact Hub streamlines that work by providing:
- A curated library of research-informed survey measures
- Guided selection based on your program and study design
- Automated survey construction and logic
- Support for common evaluation approaches
- Organized data, scoring, and reporting
- A growing evidence base that can make individual findings more meaningful
You retain the most important role: asking useful questions, understanding your program, and turning findings into action.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to build a survey?
Once you know your evaluation question, study design, and preferred measures, plan approximately 10 to 15 minutes to complete the Survey Builder. Allow additional time to review your generated survey and prepare for administration.
Who can use the STEM Impact Hub?
The Hub is designed for formal and informal STEM learning organizations and evaluators of those programs. You do not need to be a professional evaluator to use it, but your organization is responsible for planning an appropriate evaluation, administering surveys responsibly, and interpreting findings in context. The STEM Impact Hub team can help you determine what level of support you need and can work with you via our wrap-around services to make sure you are able to draw insights from your work.
Can I add my own questions?
The Hub is designed to encourage the use of well-vetted scales that can then allow for comparison across organizations. Contact our team if you need custom questions or measures.
Can I use the Hub for pre- and post-surveys?
Yes. The Hub supports common study designs including post-only, pre/post, and retrospective pre/post. Available designs vary by measure. When connecting pre- and post-responses, the Hub can use participant IDs without collecting participant names.
Can participants complete surveys in languages other than English?
We will be adding a Spanish language option for our survey scales over the next several months. If you need something sooner or a language other than Spanish, reach out to us to discuss.
Who owns and can access my data?
Your organization's agreement with the STEM Impact Hub will explain data access, storage, security, permitted uses, and how de-identified information may contribute to aggregate learning and comparison data. Review these terms before beginning data collection. In general, you own your data and give us access to it for analysis for your report and in aggregate analysis for comparison across other users.
Will I be able to compare my results with other programs?
Where sufficient, appropriate comparison data are available, the Hub may provide context from other programs using the same measures. Comparison information should account for factors such as participant age, program setting, content, and duration when possible. Availability will grow as more organizations use the Hub.
Can the Hub tell me whether my program caused an outcome?
Not by itself. The strength of any conclusion depends on the evaluation design, data quality, sample, and context. The Hub can support several study designs and provide useful evidence, but causal conclusions generally require rigorous designs and analysis.
What does the STEM Impact Hub cost?
Pricing is not yet available for the STEM Impact Hub. If you are interested in getting a quote, schedule an introductory meeting with our team.
Where can I get help?
Contact STEMimpacthub@berkeley.edu with questions about selecting measures, building surveys, administering them, accessing results, or choosing additional evaluation support.
Ready to Strengthen Your Evaluation?
Purchase access today, build a survey around the questions that matter to your program, and turn participant responses into evidence you can use.
Explore the Survey Measure Library