How People think about science information

Ball, Sara

How People think about science information

Abstract

Science and society have never quite lived in perfect harmony. This has been due to a variety of factors hindering the relationship between these two. Nevertheless, science increasingly affects our daily lives. Regardless of assumptions as to what people should know about science and why they should know it, academic research needs to have a more complete understanding of how people think about science information. The current study examines and attempts to avoid common assumptions previously made in analyzing this question. This study uses a categorization task to reveal how individuals think about science content and correlates individual understandings of the content to individual differences. The findings presented here comprise an initial attempt to define publics for science information according to the ways they inherently and individually make sense of such information, representing a new approach to defining publics for science information. This approach is intended to add an individual component to be taken in combination with previous investigations into the question of how people think about science information, which generally hold that differences are attributable to social, cultural, and geographical factors. Future research under this paradigm may add greatly to our integrated understanding of how people think about science information and may have great and far-reaching practical implications.

Date Issued

2007-07-30T20:52:12Z

Keywords

science; communication

Types

dissertation or thesis