Theory and measurement in the public understanding of science: a rejoinder to Bauer and Schoon

Abstract

In the paper `Mapping variety in public understanding of science' Bauer and Schoon apply a multi-dimensional coding to responses to the open question `Please tell me, in your own words, what does it mean to study something scientifically?', and draw some conclusions about cultural diversity from their results. I argue here that this study was inappropriate for two main reasons: first, because the open question was formulated and fielded not to elicit information which would reveal diversity but to assess public scientific literacy against a three-dimensional measure of understanding of three aspects of science which are relevant to the conduct and resolution of public science policy debates; and second, because the data set used by Bauer and Schoon was small and biased.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Miller, J. D. , 1988, From town meeting to nuclear power: the changing nature of citizenship and democracy in the United States. The United States Constitution: Roots, Rights, and Responsibilities, edited by A. E. D. Howard (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 327-338.

Miller, J. D. , 1992, The origins and consequences of scientific literacy in industrial societies. Paper presented to an International Conference on the Public Understanding of Science and Technology, Tokyo, Japan, 6 October.

Bauer, M. , and Schoon, I. , 1993, Mapping variety in public understanding of science, Public Understanding of Science, 2, 141-155.

Diesing, P. , 1971, Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences (Chicago: Aldine).

Wish, M. , Deutsch, M. , and Biener, L. , 1970, Differences in conceptual structures of nations: an exploratory study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 361-373.

Martin, B. , 1991, Scientific Knowledge in Controversy: The Social Dynamics of the Fluoridation Debate (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press).

For a good review of the literature, see Kruskal, J. B. , and Wish, M. , 1978, Multidimensional Scaling (London: Sage).

Perreault, W. D. Jr. , and Leigh, L. E. , 1989, Reliability of nominal data based on qualitative judgments. Journal of Marketing Research, 26, 135-148.