Abstract
The use of attitude surveys inScience Indicators — 1976 is reviewed and found sufficiently flawed to limit the utility of survey results. The primary confusion throughout is the treatment of science and technology as if they were indistinguishable activities. Suggestions for conceptual improvement are presented both for describing attitudes and for predicting changes in them.
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Notes and references
See Opinion Research Corporation,Attitudes of the U. S. Public Toward Science and Technology, Study I, II, and III, Princeton, NJ, September 1972, 1974 and 1976, respectively.
A quite abbreviated survey conducted by Commission of the European Communities,Science and European Public Opinion, Brussels, October 197, covering nine European countries found similar high regard for the accomplishments of science and technology. The author went on to note that it is “interesting to reflect on the gulf that separates public attitudes as revealed (in the survey) from the feelings of frustration in the scientific world which believes that it is ill appreciated by the general public for whose benefit it applies its skills.” (p. 16–17).
See T. LA PORTE, D. METLAY, Public Attitudes Toward Present and Future Technollgies: Satisfaction and Apprehensions,Social Studies of Science, 5, November 1975, pp. 378–384; and T. LA PORTE, D. METLAY,They Watch and Wonder: Public Attitudes Toward Advanced Technologies, Final Report to Ames Research Center, NASA (Grant NGR 05-003-1471), Institute of Government Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA, December 1975, Chapter VI.
See J. MILLER, K. PREWITT,NsF Survey of Public Attitudes Toward Organized Science, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, March 1979.
See T. LA PORTE, D. METLAY, Technology Observed: Attitudes of a Wary Public,Science, 188 (April 1975) 121–125, for the unsettling results of data gathered regarding such confidence.
For general discussions of attitude-behavior linkages see K. THOMAS,Attitudes and Behaviors, Penguin Books, London, 1974. For a more directed analysis of political attitudes see J. CITRIN, Political Alienation as a Social Indicator: Attitudes and Action,Social Indicators Research, 4, October 1977, pp. 381–449.
For example, see D. SEARS, T. TYLER, J. CITRIN, D. KINDER, Political System Support and Public Response to the Energy Crisis,American Journal of Political Science, 22, February, 1978, pp. 56–82; for an analysis of cognitive versus symbolic determinants of attitudes and behavior.
C. HOHENENSEM, R. KASPERSON, R. KATES, The Distrust of Nuclear Power,Science, 196 (1 April 1977) 25–34.
See P. SLOVIC, The Psychology of Protective Behavior,Journal of Safety Research, 10 (Summer, 1978) 58–68, and P. SLOVIC, B. FISCHOFF, How Safe is Safe Enough? Determinants of Perceived and Acceptable Risk, in:Too Hot to Handle: Social and Policy Issues in the Management of Radioactive Waste, L. GOULD and C. A. WALKER (Eds), Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, forthcoming.
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Porte, T.R.L., Chisholm, D. Indicators of public attitudes toward science and technology. Scientometrics 2, 439–448 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02095088
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02095088