Scientific visualization (SciVis) has become an essential means for exploring, understanding, and communicating complex scientific phenomena. However, the field still lacks a validated instrument assessing how well people read, understand, and interpret them. We present a scientific visualization literacy assessment test (SVLAT) that measures the general public's SciVis literacy. Covering a range of visualization forms and interpretation demands, SVLAT comprises 49 items grounded in 18 scientific visualizations and illustrations spanning eight visualization techniques and 11 tasks. Instrument development followed a staged, psychometrically grounded pipeline. We defined the construct and blueprint, followed by item generation, and expert review with five SciVis experts using the content validity ratio (mean CVR = 0.79). We subsequently administered a pilot test (30 participants) and a large-scale test tryout (485 participants) to evaluate the instrument's psychometric properties. For validation, we performed item analysis and refinement using both classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT) to examine item functioning and overall test quality. SVLAT demonstrates high reliability in the tryout sample (McDonald's omega_t = 0.82, Cronbach's alpha = 0.81). The assessment materials are available at https://osf.io/hr3nw/.

翻译：科学可视化（SciVis）已成为探索、理解和沟通复杂科学现象的关键手段。然而，该领域仍缺乏经过验证的评估工具来衡量人们读取、理解和解释科学可视化内容的能力。本文提出了一项科学可视化素养评估测试（SVLAT），用于评估公众的科学可视化素养。SVLAT涵盖多种可视化形式与解读需求，包含基于18种科学可视化图表与插图的49道题目，涉及8种可视化技术与11类任务。工具开发遵循阶段性心理测量学标准流程：首先定义构念与蓝图，随后生成题目，再由五位科学可视化专家采用内容效度比进行专家评审（平均CVR=0.79）。此后，我们开展了试点测试（30名参与对象）与大规模测试（485名参与对象）以评估工具的心理测量特性。为验证有效性，我们结合经典测验理论（CTT）与项目反应理论（IRT）进行题目分析与优化，检验题目功能与整体测验质量。SVLAT在测试样本中表现出高信度（McDonald’s omega_t=0.82，Cronbach’s alpha=0.81）。评估材料详见https://osf.io/hr3nw/。