Epistemic beliefs and comprehension in the context of reading multiple documents: Examining the role of conflict

•Factor analysis identified three dimensions of justification for knowing beliefs.•Students read multiple conflicting or consistent documents on a science issue.•The reading of multiple conflicting documents led to changes in epistemic beliefs.•Students reading conflicting documents displayed better comprehension performance. Tenth-graders responded to questionnaires assessing beliefs concerning the justification of knowledge claims in science and the certainty/simplicity of knowledge about a particular scientific issue. Students in an experimental group, who read multiple conflicting documents concerning the issue of sun exposure and health, changed their domain-specific beliefs concerning personal justification and justification by multiple sources as well as their topic-specific beliefs concerning the certainty/simplicity of knowledge, whereas no such changes were observed in a control group, reading multiple consistent documents on the same issue. Moreover, students in the experimental group outperformed students in the control group on a measure of multiple-documents comprehension. Findings are considered in light of the existing literature on the change of epistemic beliefs and multiple-documents comprehension.