SMC(NZ) ALERT: What do Kiwis think of science? - experts
respond
New
Zealanders rate science highly and consider it important for
the country's international competitiveness, improving
health and preserving the environment, according to a new
nationwide survey.
The Public Attitudes Towards Science and Technology Survey, released today, examines how everyday New Zealanders engage with science and technology, and how it impacts their lives.
The survey, involving more than 3,000 respondents, was undertaken by Nielsen with funding from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.
You can read more in the full survey report and accompanying press release.
Key findings from the report include:
• 83 per cent
of respondents consider science important for New Zealand's
international competitiveness, improving health (91 per
cent) and preserving the environment (87 per
cent); Dr
Fabien Medvecky, Lecturer, Centre for Science Communication,
University of Otago, comments:
• Only 59 per cent consider science important to
their daily lives and 42 per cent of people say they get too
little information about science.
• The media was the
primary channel through which New Zealanders engaged with
science; 87 per cent of people engaged with science and
technology issues through the media in the last
year.
• Internationally, New Zealand ranked well in
terms of interest in science, with 81 per cent of the
population very or fairly interested in science (ranking
higher than Australia and 27 European Union
countries).
The SMC approached experts for their
reaction to the survey. Feel free to use these quotes in
your reporting. If you would like further assistance, please
contact the SMC (04 499 5476;smc@sciencemediacentre.co.nz).
"The new Nielsen report prepared for MBIE about public attitudes to science gives us reasons to be excited, to be cautious and to be concerned. We should be excited because New Zealanders are more positive and receptive to science than just about anyone else (81% of the population is positive about science compared to 53% of Europeans and 63% of Australians). But we should be cautious because this survey only asks about science as one general idea, where in fact science is many things (the other surveys ask people about their attitude to more segregated fields like 'environmental issues', 'medical issues' or 'technologies, inventions & innovations'), so the results may tells us more about attitudes 'brand SCIENCE' than to specific aspects of science.
"But the real concern is that more than 1 in 3 New Zealander believes that science is too specialised for them to understand, and only slightly more than half of the population (59%) see science as important to their daily life. So while New Zealanders are very supportive of science as a concept and New Zealanders are clearly interested in science and its findings, we need to do a better job showing science's importance to everyday life and we need to do a better job making science accessible to all those who are interested in it."
Dr Alison Campbell, Associate Dean, Teaching
and Learning, University of Waikato,
comments:
"I think it's really positive that
such a high proportion of the population has such a positive
attitude to science and technology. I think that bodes well
for the future.
"It's obvious that having some
experience or background in science, either experience of
science in school or a qualification in science, is the key
here. One message from this is that we need to aim to give
kids really positive experiences in school science, with the
hopeful effect that that will keep them in science longer in
school and lead to more students going on to train in
science at university level.
"One of the issues that
we seem to have with science outreach is that there's quite
a high proportion of people identifying as struggling either
with the level of specialisation in science or with the
apparent level of conflict in information available. This
does suggest that from an outreach and science communication
perspective we have quite a bit of work to do. I think the
nature of science is not well understood, for example in the
sense that there's never 100 per cent certainty in
science.
"Because there's quite a high proportion of
Maori and Pasifika in the cohorts that have more negative
attitudes to science and technology, I think that's going to
tie in quite strongly with the government push for
universities -- under their agreement with the Tertiary
Education Commission -- to increase the proportion of Maori
and Pasifika students at the tertiary level in the sciences,
engineering and technology. That means there's a real onus
on the secondary and tertiary sectors to address the lower
perceived relevance of science in those groups.
"The
survey shows there's a real desire for engagement and having
a say in science. We need to look quite critically at the
sort of outreach and information that we provide. I think
there's a real case here for being more forward-thinking
about how we do citizen science, and getting people involved
in actually doing the science, rather than being passive
recipients of information about it.
"It was really
encouraging to see that we're better than Australia in the
benchmarking sections, and that we're in line with the UK
and quite high on the OECD index. I did notice that the UK
has higher support for blue skies research in the general
population. I think we need to enhance and develop
understanding out there of why blue skies research is
actually as important as applied research with a recognised
purpose."
New comments will be posted to the SMC website as they are received.