Research literacy provides a foundation and assurance for cultivating creative talent, enhancing the ability to solve practical problems, and fostering scientific thinking and innovative spirit. This study developed a Research Literacy Scale for elementary school students through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, of which the reliability and validity were tested by using creative personality and creative thinking processes as criteria. Additionally, a latent profile analysis was conducted to examine heterogeneous patterns of research literacy among 7204 students in grades 4~6 from 26 schools in Jiangsu province, China. The results indicated that the scale consisted of three primary dimensions and 11 secondary dimensions. The internal consistency coefficient for the overall scale was 0.98, while the coefficients for the three primary dimensions ranged from 0.93 to 0.96, and those for the 11 secondary dimensions ranged from 0.56 to 0.94. The latent profile analysis revealed three subtypes of research literacy among elementary school students: high-level group (34.04%), medium-level group (54.09%), and low-level group (11.87%). Among them, students in the high-level group had higher scores in curiosity, reflective thinking, and sense of responsibility but lower scores in digital awareness. Students in the medium-level group performed higher scores in curiosity, self-coordination, and sense of responsibility but lower scores in digital awareness. The low-level group exhibited relatively higher scores in responsibility, self-coordination, digital awareness, and digital capability but lower scores in problem discovery and problem-solving.
