Enhancing the Broader Impacts of Developing a Social-Cognitive, Multilevel, Empirically-Based Model of Public Engagement for the Shaping of Science and Innovation Policy

University Of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln NE

Investigators

Abstract

Emerging science and technology (S&T) innovations can trigger public controversies and signal the opportunity to work through competing public values, understandings, and misunderstandings to decide how to reconcile public values with new S&T. One way that Congress (21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act , 2003) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (Open Government Plan, April 7, 2010) have suggested to approach this complicated task is to engage with the public about the ethical, legal, and social issues related to scientific and technological innovations. Currently, a wide range of public engagement techniques are used-including focus groups, public forums and deliberations, surveys, and social marketing. Different forms of public engagement involve different features designed to evoke meaningful public input. However, little is known regarding which public engagement options are effective under different conditions. How should information about scientific or technological innovations be conveyed? Is it better for participants to engage with information individually or in groups? Can and should participants be encouraged to think critically about the information presented? This project seeks to begin to answer these questions by applying insights from psychology and other social sciences to multiple simulated and controlled (that is, laboratory) "public" engagements about complex, cutting-edge, nanotechnology issues. The researchers collected substantial information from these engagement events. The analyses of the data from the engagements will enable researchers, policymakers, and the public to better understand the strengths and limitations of different approaches to public engagements and to build new insights about such engagements. This project will disseminate data and results from a set of four unique longitudinal studies. Studies were conducted across three- to four-week timespans, and involved more than 1,200 student participants. In each study, different social and cognitive aspects of engagement were experimentally manipulated to assess their impacts on common public-engagement goals. For example, studies varied the design of information about new technologies, and whether participants considered technology-relevant ethical, legal, and social issues individually or in groups. Effects of these manipulations were examined on knowledge acquired about nanotechnology, attitudes toward and perceptions of the development and regulation of nanotechnology, trust in nanoscientists and the policymakers who deal with regulating nanotechnology, and acceptance of policy outcomes. The current project will broadly disseminate each study's findings, as well as facilitate public access by providing detailed descriptions of the manipulated design features and supplementary materials that include the data from the studies, study materials, instruments, and data transformation and analysis syntax in multiple formats. These materials will foster further analyses by other researchers using alternative theoretical perspectives and allow theoretical development on topics beyond nanotechnology.