EAGER: Development of a Research Tool to Investigate Factors that Influence Researchers' Attitudes about Engagement in Public Science Events

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

Expansion and diversification of the scientific workforce, along with increasing public trust and support of science, are critical to ensure that the United States continues to be a global leader in science. Achieving these goals can be addressed by encouraging scientists to interact directly with the public through activities that both demystify the process of research and create dialog between practitioners and the public. This project focuses on identifying positive and negative factors influencing researchers' participation in public science events and will develop a research tool to understand profiles of scientists' engagement with the public. The research tool will be applied widely to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers as a test population to explore what factors are key motivations for why researchers do (or do not) engage with the public through science. These profiles, in turn, will inform tailored interventions such as science communication training, exposure to different audiences and constructive feedback that support researchers in public engagement. These interventions may increase the likelihood that a more diverse pool of researchers participate in sustained science engagement with the public. The specific aims of this EAGER project are to: 1) develop a validated scale for a public engagement profile for researchers, 2) establish a public engagement profile baseline for all UW-Madison campus researchers, regardless of past participation in public engagement with science, 3) survey all UW-Madison researchers following participation in public engagement with science to identify factors shaping researchers' profiles, and 4) identify emergent public engagement profiles to support identification of key factors influencing researchers? initial and sustained participation in public engagement with science. A multivariate analysis of features either in researchers' profiles or in the events in which they participate may reveal factors that predict researcher engagement, thereby informing tactics to broaden and increase researcher participation in public engagement with science. Such tactics would transform the design of public engagement in science from a process based on intuition and personal experience to one based on data on factors that systematically attract and sustain researchers' participation in public engagement with science. Additionally, this research will offer recommendations for the effective design of collective impact programs that engage researchers and the public. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.