AAAS S&E indicators Chapter 7 Overview Presentation: Public Attitudes and Understanding
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•447 views
Presentation by John C. Besley at the 2014 Meeting of the AAAS. Focus was key results from Chapter 7 of the 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators. Besley was the lead author of the chapter, although the views expressed in the presentation are his own and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation or the National Science Board.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (14)
Similar to AAAS S&E indicators Chapter 7 Overview Presentation: Public Attitudes and Understanding
Similar to AAAS S&E indicators Chapter 7 Overview Presentation: Public Attitudes and Understanding (20)
More from John C. Besley
More from John C. Besley (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
AAAS S&E indicators Chapter 7 Overview Presentation: Public Attitudes and Understanding
- 1. Key Public Opinion Findings from Science and Engineering Indicators 2014 John C. Besley, Ph.D. Ellis N. Brandt Chair College of Communication Arts and Sciences Michigan State University (@johnbesley or jbesley@msu.edu) *The views expressed today are those of the presenter and not necessarily of the National Science Foundation or the National Science Board.
- 2. Background • S&E Indicators appears every 2 years • Report from the National Science Board to the President and Congress • Produced by NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) • Chapter 7 focused on “Public Attitudes and Understanding” • AAAS Fellow Jon D. Miller key player in the first decades of this work
- 3. Background • Chapter 7 – Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding • Primary data source: Special section of the 2012 General Social Survey (GSS) • First NSF science survey: 1972; Part of GSS since 2006 • Reviews findings others (Gallup, Pew Research Center, Eurobarometer) • U.S. is one of the few countries conducting regular S&T surveys and reviews NSF 2012 science module n = 2,256 Female: Age: n = 1,245 (55%) 18-24, n = 140 (6%) 25-34, n = 357 (16%) 35-44, n = 385 (17%) 45-54, n = 423 (19%) 54-64, n = 420 (19%) >/= 65, n = 504 (22%) Education: <High school, n = 308 (14%) High school diploma, n = 671 (30%) Some college, n = 608 (27%) Bachelor’s , n = 429 (19%) Graduate/Professional degree, n = 240 (11%) Response rate: 71% *The views expressed today are those of the presenter and not necessarily of the National Science Foundation or the National Science Board.
- 4. Content • • • • Interest, Information Sources and Involvement Public Knowledge about S&T Public Attitudes about S&T in General Public Attitudes about Specific S&T-related Issues (not the focus today) Full report: • 25K words • 22 figures • 11 tables • 38 appendix tables *The views expressed today are those of the presenter and not necessarily of the National Science Foundation or the National Science Board.
- 5. Interest, Information Sources and Involvement • • Americans say they’re interested in S&T 40% of Americans “Very Interested” in “New Scientific Discoveries” • Local/personal issues strongest (including medicine and environment)
- 6. Interest, Information Sources and Involvement • 2011 science survey by BBVA Foundation of US, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, German y, Italy, Poland, and Spain, United Kingdom • • Rafael Pardo heads BBVA Foundation; collaborator with Jon D. Miller on S&T topics Opportunity for international comparisons for 2014 Indicators
- 7. Interest, Information Sources and Involvement • 2011 BBVA Foundation survey suggests … • • US residents watch a little more TV about S&T as 10-country EU average US residents read about the same amount of news as 10-country EU average Several countries are somewhat more engaged (e.g,. UK, DK)
- 8. Interest, Information Sources and Involvement • US appears to be relatively strong on informal science education use • About half of Americans visited a zoo/aquarium in previous year • About 58% had visited a zoo/aquarium, natural history museum, or S&T museum • Recent data from other countries lacking; BBVA suggests wide variance in EU • China quite strong; up from previous surveys
- 9. Public Knowledge about S&T • Many Americans continue to have a hard time with science questions • Average of 6.5/9 question on index (index does not include evolution question) • • Very little change over time Clear evidence of education impact
- 10. Public Knowledge about S&T • Many Americans continue to have a hard time with science questions • Average of 6.5/9 question on index (index does not include evolution question) • • Very little change over time Clear evidence of education impact
- 11. Public Knowledge about S&T • Many Americans continue to have a hard time with science questions • Average of 6.5/9 question on index (index does not include evolution question) • • Very little change over time Clear evidence of education impact • Wording changes affect scores on two questions • 39% say “true” to “universe began with a huge explosion” • BUT 60% say “true” if “according to astronomers” is added as a preface • 48% say “true” to “human beings … developed from an earlier species of animals” • BUT 72% say “true if “according to the theory of evolution” is added as a preface. (Therefore not included in the index)
- 12. Public Knowledge about S&T • BBVA Foundation survey: U.S. is similar to many European countries on science quiz • Battery of 22 True/false questions
- 13. Public Attitudes about S&T • 41% of Americans: “a great deal of confidence” – scientific community. • 40% of Americans: “a great deal of confidence” – medicine • Down from 61% in the mid-1970s
- 14. Public Attitudes about S&T • Overall, very little difference in how people see scientists and engineers.
- 15. Public Attitudes about S&T • Almost every agrees that scientists are solving problems, working for humanity, and trying to make things better.
- 16. Public Attitudes about S&T • Most seem to think science/engineering pays well and wouldn’t be too boring
- 17. Public Attitudes about S&T • But some people still think scientists/ engineers might at risk and kind of “odd and peculiar.”
- 18. Public Attitudes about S&T • But some people still think scientists/ engineers might at risk and kind of “odd and peculiar.”
- 19. Public Attitudes about S&T • People overwhelming continue to think the benefits of science outweigh any potential harms.
- 20. Public Attitudes about S&T • Americans and Europeans hold similar reservations and see similar opportunity from science
- 21. Public Attitudes about S&T • About a 1/3 of people think S&T should get more money
- 22. Public Attitudes about S&T • • About a 1/3 of people think S&T should get more money BUT they also think many other things should get more money, too … (Some of those things involved science)
- 23. Summary* The public may not know as much about science as we might like … … but they still like science just fine (at least, in general) Thank you to Lori Thurgood at SRI International *The NSF’s National Center are those of the and theviews expressed today for Science and presenter Statistics Engineering and not necessarily of the National Science Foundation or the National Science Board
- 24. Bonus Material
- 25. Interest, Information Sources and Involvement • • TV is primary source news for Americans BUT Internet passed TV as the primary channel for S&T news • Additional questions suggest that 2/3 of the “Internet” is newspapers • Newspapers (33%) and TV (32%) are therefore the true primary sources of S&T news
- 26. Public Attitudes about S&T • • • Traditional science fields as scientific Many activities seen as scientific Social science is not seen as scientific
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone,Thankyou for coming today.My name is John Besley and I’m a faculty member at Michigan State University. I’m both chairing the session today and I’ll be your first presenter. I’m joined today by Cary Funk from the Pew Research Center and Lydia Saad from Gallup.I am here because I was the lead writer for chapter on public attitudes and understanding in the 2014 edition of the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators.Both Pew and Gallup data feature prominently in the chapter.I do want to note, however, that while I served as the lead writer for the chapter, my comments today are absolutely my own. I am not here to represent or speak on behalf of the National Science Board or the National Science Foundation.I can’t emphasize this enough.
- To start off, I want to say a few words about Science and Engineering Indicators.As many of you may know, Indicators comes out ever two years at about this time. This year’s edition was formally published last Tuesday and presented at an event on capital hill earlier this week. As has been the tradition for quite a while now, chapter 7 of the report focuses on public attitudes and understanding and is the foremost authority on this subject.AAAS fellow Jon Miller was central force in much of that earlier work.An important aspect of this chapter is that the fact that comes from National Science Board means that the writers have to be very careful to keep it politically neutral. The report doesn’t, for example, break down people’s responses by ideology or religion in the way the Pew Research Center or Gallup might.
- Much of the 2014 chapter 7, as with recent chapter 7s, is based on questions that the NSF sponsors on the University of Chicago’s biannual General Social Survey – the GSS.The GSS is an amazing resource to social science researchers. It’s made publicly available for free and uses a face-to-face interview process to achieve wonderful response rates.The NSF did telephone surveys for Indicators up until 2004 but my understanding is they decided they needed to contract with the GSS starting in 2006 because of concerns about declining response rates from telephone surveys.The most recent GSS is from 2012 and so most of the data I’ll talk about today comes from 2012 but its important to understand that we’re not talking about a fast-moving political campaign here. As I’ll note in several places, there’s a lot of stability in how people think about science.Also important to understand is that the Indicators reports on high-quality, probability based surveys that groups like the Pew Research Center and Gallup do in the United States and around the world. One thing that I find unique and interesting is that while the European Union and a range of countries do semi-regular surveys on S&T topics, they only report the results of their own surveys. In contrast, indicators has an “international” comparisons component to each sub-section of the report. I won’t get to spend as much time today on some of that data but it’s all in the report.Another thing I won’t spend a lot of time talking about are demographic breakdowns of the data. These are discussed in the chapter in many places but when you start working with the data, the demographics differences only explain a small portion of how people respond.The appendices for the chapter also have detailed breakdowns of most of the findings by various demographics but I think it’s worth focusing today on the trends, rather than these breakdowns in most cases.
- So with that as an introduction, I want to spend the remaining part of my time today with an overview of the key findings from the report.I am going to focus on three first parts of the report in particular because that’s the focus of the GSS and it is also where I think some of the most unique findings can be found.Overall … What I’m going to suggest to you today is that I think the message of the chapter is that –we all might like it if Americans:paid more attention to science,knew more about science, or loved science a bit more Butscience as an institution in society is doing pretty well compared to most other institutions. Let’s see if you agree.
- First. Let’s start with interest, information sources and involvement.About 40% of Americans say they’re “very interested” in new scientific discoveries. (CLICK)This puts science in about the middle of the pack, below economic and local school issues, but above several other important topics. (CLICK)Other science-related topics, however, rate somewhat higher, especially New Medical Discoveries with 58% of Americans saying they’re “very interested” in the subjects.This figure however, shows that interest in medical discoveries has been trending downwards whereas science has stayed pretty stable.
- The title of this session suggests we’ll also dig into some international data.One really wonderful source of comparison data is a 2011 science survey I haven’t seen much discussion of it or seen it used for academic research but it’s really quite impressive.This survey involved 1500 respondents in each of the five largest European Countries, five additional European countries, and the U.S.The survey was done by the BBVA Foundation and the head of the foundation has had a long time interest in attitudes towards science.
- In terms of media use, the BBVA Foundation survey highlights that US residents are relatively high science media users but they are, by no means, at the top.The UK and Denmark, in particular, stand out as somewhat more active users of science media. Here we see that about 47% of Americans say they often watch TV programs about science, 34% say they often read about science in the newspaper and a similar number say they follow science topics online.
- Beyond media use, I know that the AAAS meeting attracts a number of participants from the Informal Science Education community. The 2012 GSS data suggests that the US continues to be a leader in this, although the comparable data from other countries is a little stale. One interesting giant 2010 survey out of China that the NSF had translated for Indicators suggests that the Chinese now have similar rates of informal science participation as Americans.Some BBVA data highlighted in the report also suggests that there is wide variation in informal science participation across the Europe.
- I’ll leave the question of where people get exposed to science information behind and now turn to what seems like the most frequently cited aspect of chapter 7. In 2012, Americans answered about 6.5 questions out of 9 nine key questions correctly.These questions have been subject to a lot of debate over the years and many have suggested that they’re not adequate to measure people’s knowledge about science. If you look back at the 2010 Indicators you’ll see an attempt to ask a much, much broader range of questions and what was found is that scores on these additional questions correlated very highly with the standard items that have been in use since the 1990s.It’s also easy to get cynical about the fact that half of Americans don’t know how lasers work or some of the other questions. As you might expect, more education both in general and in the sciences specifically leads to higher scores but we also know that people can get really knowledgeable, really fast when then need to. There has also been quite a bit of research over the years that suggest that the relationship between knowledge about science and science attitudes isn’t that strong.There are people who think highly of science but don’t know much about and there are people who do well on these sorts of science quizzes but don’t have much love for the topic.
- Also noteworthy is that the average score on these questions has been pretty stable over the years despite widespread efforts to increase so-called science literacy.
- We also know that there are some other dynamics at play in these kinds of quizzes.An interesting experiment that was built into the GSS to replicate an experiment from the 2004 Indicators chapter shows that changing the wording for a couple of questions that have religious implications for some Americans can change how people respond in pretty substantial ways. For the “big bang” question, scores go up by 21% when you give respondents the simple preface “according to astronomers.”For the evolution question, scores go up by 24% when you add the preface “according to the theory of evolution.”The NSF does not report on the religious affiliation of respondents but you can probably infer what’s going on here.
- For an international comparison, you can again look at the BBVA and see that the U.S. Knowledge levels are very similar to those in many large European countries on a battery of 22 questions, including some of the same ones included on the GSS.Denmark and the Netherlands stand out as doing particularly well, although the US average is probably hurt by several of the questions that might have sparked respondents to answer with their religious identity in mind.
- Let’s now turn to the section that I find the most interesting, the section on general attitudes toward S&T.The first thing I want to highlight is that when you look at a range of important institutions or groups in the United States, the scientific community and the associated medical community do very, very well.It’s a bit of a weird question in that it only has three categories and the middle category is “some” confidence. On the other hand, this same question has been asked as part of the GSS since the 1970s.This data is hiding in the appendix for the chapter but it shows that whereas institutional leaders in congress, the press, and medicine have lost confidence over the years, science has stayed pretty stable right there around 40% with only about 1 in 10 expressing “hardly any” confidence.
- One unique aspect of the 2014 report that I’d like spend a bit of time on as a supplement to confidence measures is a group of questions about how Americans really see both scientists and engineers.
- The picture that comes out is that almost all Americans think that both scientists and engineers what help solve problems, are dedicated to the good of humanity, and want to make life better for the average person.We’re talking 95% to 85% agreement with all of these questions, which is pretty fantastic.
- Most also seem to think that scientists and engineers get paid reasonably well and that a job in science and engineering wouldn’t be “boring.”More than two thirds seem to think scientists and engineers are paid reasonably and more than three quarters seem to indicate that they would see a job in science or engineering as “not boring.”
- On the flip side, it seems like many people – almost half in the case of science – think that science and engineering professions might be kind of dangerous. About a third of Americans think that scientists and engineers might be kind of odd.This is my favorite question in the whole report as it directly gets at the stereotype that I worry haunts science.
- Finally, fewer than a third of Americans appear to think that scientists lack a range of interests, work alone, or fail to have fun.Many of these questions were also asked in the context of scientists in 1983 and 2001 and there hasn’t been much change in attitudes.Overall, at least when asked, these numbers suggest that most Americans recognize that the stereotypical, wild-haired scientist working alone in a lab isn’t usually realistic.
- Looking more generally, as might be hoped, just as people think relatively highly of scientists, they also generally think that the benefits of science outweigh any potential harms.This isn’t new. As you can see, about 7 in 10 Americans have seen relative value in science going back more than three decades.
- The BBVA Foundation also asked a whole battery of questions about both the perceived promise of science as perceived problems. Their data shows that Americans and Europeans have relatively similar views, although Americans seem to hold fewer reservations about science and they don’t seem to see as much promise, either.*Science is the motor or progress; Thanks to science, people’s health is improving all the time; Science is the best way to understand the world, etc.; Science makes our way of life change too fast; science has more everything more complex and hard to understand, people would be better office if they lived a simpler life with so much science and technology, science has crated a world that is full of risks for people in their daily lives, etc. (0-10 point disagree/agree scales)
- A positive attitude is one thing but what about financial support?The percentage of Americans saying that science is receiving too little support is creeping up.It was about 31% back in the early 80s and has risen to around 38%. In the same time, support for more spending on health went from about 61% up to 77 in 2005 and has now slid back down to where it started. Similarly, support for environmental spending started around 52% and has bounced around quite a bit, hitting highs in the mid 70s before coming down to 52%.
- It is important, in this regard to recognize that supporting scientific research is middle-level priority for most respondents. There are number of issues such as education and assistance for the poor that respondents are more likely to say receive too little funding. Several specific science-related topics such as health care funding, environment funding and funding for alternative energy sources are relatively high priorities.
- Overall, as I suggested at the beginning, my sense is that there’s lots of room to wish that Americans paid closer attention to science and knew more about science. At the same time, however, if you think about how people view science in comparison to other aspects of society, science comes off pretty well.In my academic role as a science communication researcher, I also don’t think anything here suggests we couldn’t try to solidify and enhance science’s place in society. I’ve been honored to be able to work with groups such as AAAS outreach and engagement shop over the last couple of years on research into how scientists think about public engagement and there are any number of great projects out there aimed at figuring out how scientists can better communicate with the public. My sense is there’s lots of room for improvement. The cool thing about having ongoing projects like chapter 7 of science and engineering indicators is that it can give those involved in advancing science’s place in a society a set of metrics that can track how they’re doing.
- Also interesting is that the “internet” officially passed TV as the primary source for science news and it’s closing in on TV when it comes to general news.One neat thing that’s in this year’s GSS is a question that let’s us better break down what people mean by “the internet.”When you do that, what you find is that they often mean online versions of newspapers. In fact, newspapers and TV are about tied as the place where Americans turn for S&T news.