Measuring scientific interest: the effect of knowledge questions on interest ratings

1993 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Gaskell ◽  
Daniel Wright ◽  
Colm O'Muircheartaigh
Keyword(s):  
Life Science ◽  
Context Effects ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Sample Survey ◽  
Scientific Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
Attitudes Towards Science ◽  
Understanding Of Science

Research into the publics' interest in, knowledge of and attitudes towards science has captured the attention of politicians and educators. Sample survey research has been employed to assess the diverse aspects of the public understanding of science. However, surveys are subject to various biases that may affect the findings, calling into question both the reliability and the validity of the measures concerned. In this study we look at one common bias—that of context effects. Context effects occur when a question influences responses to later questions. The effects of answering one of four different sets of science questions (physical or life science, and easy or difficult questions) on what people report as their interest in science and what they think science is, were investigated using a split ballot format ( n = 2099). Two approaches from social psychology, framing and consistency, are used to predict the effects of these knowledge questions on subsequent responses. Context effects were found and were more in line with the framing explanation. The results signal the need for caution in interpreting findings from surveys of the public understanding of science.

The relationship between knowledge and attitudes in the public understanding of science in Britain

1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Evans ◽  
John Durant
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Research ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Attitudes Towards Science ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Human Embryology

The belief that greater understanding leads to more positive attitudes informs many practical initiatives in the public understanding of science. However, there has been comparatively little empirical study of the justification for this belief. This paper explores the relationship between understanding of science and levels of support for science using a national sample of over 2000 British respondents. The analysis indicates that the internal consistency of attitudes towards science is poor, and that the links between attitudes towards science in general and attitudes towards specific areas of scientific research are weak. Understanding of science is weakly related to more positive attitudes in general: but, more significantly, it is also associated with more coherent and more discriminating attitudes. Of particular importance is the finding that while knowledgeable members of the public are more favourably disposed towards science in general, they are less supportive of morally contentious areas of research than are those who are less knowledgeable. Although an informed public opinion is likely to provide a slightly more supportive popular basis for some areas of scientific research, it could serve to constrain research in controversial areas such as human embryology.

Understanding understanding: a model for the public learning of radioactivity

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Alsop
Keyword(s):  
Informal Learning ◽  
Background Radiation ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Change Model ◽  
Potential Health ◽  
The Public ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Conceptual Change Model

While much of the work in the public understanding of science has focused on the public's appreciation of science and their familiarity with key scientific concepts, understanding the processes involved in learning science has largely been ignored. This article documents a study of how particular members of the public learn about radiation and radioactivity, and proposes a model to describe their learning—the Informal Conceptual Change Model [ICCM]. ICCM is a multidimensional framework that incorporates three theoretical dimensions—the cognitive, conative, and affective. The paper documents each of these dimensions, and then illustrates the model by drawing upon data collected in a case study. The emphasis of the analysis is on understanding how the members of the public living in an area with high levels of background radiation learn about the science of this potential health threat. The summarizing comments examine the need for a greater awareness of the complexities of informal learning.

The roles of rhetoric in the public understanding of science

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan G. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Contextual Model ◽  
Deficit Model ◽  
The Public ◽  
Science Rhetoric ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Social Scientific

In the public understanding of science, rhetoric has two distinct roles: it is both a theory capable of analysing public understanding and an activity capable of creating it. In its analytical role, rhetoric reveals two dominant models of public understanding: the deficit model and the contextual model. In the deficit model, rhetoric acts in the minor role of creating public understanding by accommodating the facts and methods of science to public needs and limitations. In the contextual model, rhetoric and rhetorical analysis play major roles. Rhetorical analysis provides an independent source of evidence to secure social scientific claims; in addition, it supplies the grounds for a rhetoric of reconstruction, one that reconstitutes the fact and facts of science in the public interest.

Introduction

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
J. V. FIELD ◽  
FRANK A. J. L. JAMES
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
British Society ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
Royal Institution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
The Relationship

Art and science are both terms whose meanings have been subject to change over time. At the end of the twentieth century, the terms tend to be used antithetically. Current views of the relationship between the spheres of activity that they connote range from a sweeping dismissal of any connection to an opposing but less extreme conviction that scientists and artists have something in common. The latter belief apparently at least partly stems from an underlying feeling that at any one time both activities are, after all, products of a single culture. The woolly shade of C. P. Snow's idea of there being ‘two cultures’ in the Britain of the 1950s at once rises to view if one attempts to pursue analysis along these lines.In setting up a conference called ‘The Visual Culture of Art and Science from the Renaissance to the Present’ the organizing committee was not attempting to resolve any kind of debate that may be perceived to exist in regard to the separation or otherwise of the domains of art and science. Rather, we wished to bring together historians of science working on areas that are of interest to historians of art, and historians of art working on areas that are of interest to historians of science, as well as practising artists and scientists of the present time who show an interest in each others' fields. We were, of course, aware that this agenda raised questions in regard to present-day relationships between art and science, but we hoped that, as we were dealing with a range of historical periods, any light that was shed would be moderately illuminating rather than blindingly lurid. The meeting, which took place on 12–14 July 1995, mainly at the Royal Society in London, was organized jointly by the British Society for the History of Science, the Association of Art Historians and the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) – a joint committee of the Royal Institution, British Association and the Royal Society. The historical examples presented at the conference showed a wide variety of interactions between art and science. The success of the conference (it attracted an audience of about 200) suggested very strongly that art, which has a large public following, can be used to encourage an interest in science, whose public following, according to scientists, could be better.

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