National surveys – If you’re going to bother, bother hard

Author: Rod Lamberts – CPAS, The Australian National University, Australia

Co-author: Lyndal Byford – Acting CEO, The Australian Science Media Centre

Periodic national public surveys of beliefs and attitudes to science can provide countries with excellent snapshots of the status and condition of science in the public psyche. These kinds of surveys can help inform policy, identify areas of national science communication need, and provide guidance for areas of new research.

But such surveys rarely go the extra mile and directly compare public beliefs and attitudes with those of other stakeholders critical to national science communication discussions, such as scientists and journalists.

By teaming up with science communication practitioners from the Australian Science Media Centre, academics from the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, have attempted to bridge this gap.

In this session we outline not just some eye-widening results of the collaboration between these two national centres, we also highlight the pros and cons of doing such research, and even ask the question: just how useful are these surveys anyway?

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Science
Area of interest: Investigating science communication practices