Ian Pearson - Value of public science surveys

Thank you very much to the Royal Society for inviting me here tonight to speak to you as part of your two day event looking at international indicators of public attitudes to and engagement in science.

It is excellent news that you are looking at these important issues in detail, and I am particularly pleased to see the wide mix of policy makers, scientists, science communicators and researchers here tonight. I don't think it's possible to overestimate the value of this kind of interaction. I'm very much looking forward to the discussion that will follow mine and Dr Bauer's speeches.

As we progress through an era of enormous change and uncertainty which requires an almost instant response to competitive, environmental and societal challenges, increasing both our scientific literacy and our ability to respond to those challenges will become increasingly important right across our society.

That's why I'm currently engaging in a process of refreshing, revitalising and restating the UK's current science and society vision. I will be speaking about this tomorrow in the first annual Gareth Roberts Memorial lecture, but in essence I believe we need a society that is both enthused and excited by science, one where the public understands the value of science and its applications in today's society and can feel confident about how scientists are operating. Where the public has a higher degree of scientific literacy. A society which has a developed understanding of scientific processes that enables and supports individual decision-making.

The world we live in today is very different to that of even five or ten years ago, and increasingly we need our scientists, our engineers and technologists to be quick off the mark.

Scientists don't operate in a vacuum. They are part of the society in which they and the outcomes of their research operate. But scientists have not always been as effective at communication as they could be, or as engaged in debate on the ethics of what they do as they need to be.

If we want to progress, we need to engage at an early stage with our publics. I appreciate the efforts of Sir David King in trying to build public confidence by rolling out the Universal Ethical Code for Scientists - it's a first step in building that public/scientist relationship that we so truly need. I'm sure my fellow policy makers would agree with this.

If we want to take the public with us, it is almost a truism to say that we have to know and fully understand the attitudes, hopes and fears that they currently have. Only then can we establish how we move forward, addressing genuine concerns and dispelling misconceptions along the way. For me, that is the true value of the public attitudes survey.

Scientists don't work in isolation, neither do Governments or economies. Collaborating across international boundaries and understanding international concerns in this arena is part of everyday life. For that reason I very much welcome the work that the Society and all of you here tonight are engaged in - and your efforts to build an international picture of work in this area. To develop a set of indicators to help us assess over time how we are progressing in increasing our publics' understanding of scientific issues will be enormously valuable. This is not to say that publics which understand issues very well will necessarily agree with them. Indeed it has been shown that increased knowledge does not equate to increased trust. Our focus must be not only on how and how well we communicate science to the public but also how we respond to attitudes, concerns and aspirations.

As some of you may be aware, the UK Government conducted two relatively recent Public Attitudes surveys in this area, one carried out by MORI which reported in 2005, and the other actioned by the Wellcome Trust which reported in 2000. The figures from these surveys tell us that the UK already has a strong pro-science culture. In 2005 over 85% of people said they think science makes a good contribution to society, up 5%. And over 80% think that science will make our lives easier, up 10%.

Significantly, I think, the names of these reports highlight the change in focus which you are discussing here - thus we moved from the 'functional' 'Science and the Public' in 2000 to the more people-centred 'Science in Society' in the later survey.

This year we have been working with the Research Councils UK Science in Society team to conduct a survey which will look again at public attitudes to science - and engineering - although engineering has been covered more widely in a recently published Royal Academy of Engineering Survey. For the first time there is also a stated attempt to examine the public's attitude to social science.

We are planning to publish the results as part of National Science and Engineering Week in March next year.

Some 2000 respondents have responded to the survey, representing all areas of the UK, with a boosted sample from Wales and Northern Ireland. We have also boosted the samples of young people and from black and ethnic minority communities. Increasing our understanding of the motivations of these two particular groups will be a key focus. The results of the survey are currently being analysed so I can't at this stage tell you whether views and attitudes to science have changed significantly from our previous surveys. Of course I hope the figures will show an increase again. But I am also looking forward to seeing beyond the numbers to what the issues are.

We plan to make this type of survey a regular feature of our work plan into the future. We may also consider more frequent shorter surveys, but I hope even at this frequency it is one data source that you can feed into your international set of indicators.

The survey element of the work has been backed up by focus group at the beginning and end of the project. Those conducted post survey are proving crucial in helping the researchers get to the bottom of some of the rationale behind the responses.

Of course a large scale project of this kind is only one element of our overall strategy to build public confidence and gain an understanding of our society's current levels of interest in science and technology issues. We already provide opportunities for public engagement through our Sciencewise programme, which enables us, through dialogue, to get to the heart of the issues, and gain even more in-depth understanding of concerns. While surveys can give us a snapshot in time of the attitudes and interests of a very representative sample, our work in public engagement exercises like sciencehorizons, the latest of these dialogue projects, has enabled us to get some very interesting, richer insights into what people are currently thinking, and the issues which will exercise them into the future. We are currently exploring the particular topics of interests with policy-makers across Government to prioritise those that may require further dialogue work. It is I believe important that this mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches continues.

Into the future, we need research that will demonstrate how effectively we are meeting our science and society objectives - for example, to assess how we get more children enthused and involved in science subjects; how we translate that early enthusiasm into studying these subjects at University and beyond; and how we attract more women and people with ethnic minority backgrounds to increase the representativeness of our scientific workforce.

But our work doesn't just focus on those students and workers who will be engaged in a formal way in scientific endeavour. As I said at the outset, we need to able to assess how we are doing in our attempts to increase scientific literacy across the board, and how we are working with our partners like the Royal Society in delivering our overall agenda. We need to know what methods are best at helping us to reach our key objectives, and how we can all work together most effectively to deliver them.

I look forward to seeing the outcomes of your work from this event, and hearing about your work programme for the future. We are committed to ensuring that public attitudes surveys have a continuing role to play in our overall approach, and we would welcome your input into how we can improve our approach, develop the international perspective, and build on the excellent work that is already out there.

I said at the start that I have initiated a refresh of our science and society vision. But I don't want that vision to be just mine. Or just seen as Government's vision. We cannot do this alone. We already work with and alongside a wide range of science communicators, our learned societies, research councils, education professionals and business, many of whom are here this evening to reach the many groups that make up the 'public'. I want us all to be able to stand firmly behind a vision for the UK and work together, aligning our strategies for public engagement and bringing about a greater coherence to activities in this area.

I welcome your views on our current draft of the vision, which is:

'To build a society that is excited about science; values its importance to both our social and economic wellbeing; feels confident in its use and supports a well-qualified and representative scientific workforce'.

I welcome too your participation in the dialogue we need to have about how we can work together more effectively and what more Government needs to do on this agenda. I hope as many people as possible will be involved in the process of taking this forward over the coming months.

Thank you.