Assessing public engagement with science in a university primate research centre in a national zoo.
Assessing public engagement with science in a university primate research centre in a national zoo.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0034505
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发表时间：
2012
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Whiten A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bowler MT;Buchanan-Smith HM;Whiten A
近年来，研究机构和资助机构越来越多地鼓励科学家积极与公众接触，最终由公众资助他们的工作。动物行为作为一门学科具有几个特征，包括其固有的可访问性和对公众的吸引力，这可能有助于它在这些发展中占据特别成功的地位。它还建立了一系列定量行为方法，可用于记录公众对参与计划的反应。考虑到目前公众参与项目投入的巨大努力，这种评估变得越来越重要，而公众参与项目的效果往往是假设的，而不是证明的。在此，我们报告了我们首次尝试量化通过爱丁堡动物园“人类进化研究中心的生命联系”的数十万游客样本行为的相关方面的尝试。该大学研究中心积极鼓励公众关注正在进行的灵长类动物研究和相关的科学参与活动。游客的重点关注和扫描采样显示，按照动物园的共同标准，中心的“停留时间”很长，第二年增加新的参与元素后，总停留时间显着增加，最忠诚的三分之二的游客的停留时间增加了两倍。研究发现，较大的游客群体比较小的游客群体在中心停留的时间更长。观看现场、活跃的科学是最有效的活动，精心构建的解释性材料的新颖呈现可以增强这种活动的效果。研究结果强调了动物园作为生物科学公众参与中心的重要性和潜力。
Recent years have seen increasing encouragement by research institutions and funding bodies for scientists to actively engage with the public, who ultimately finance their work. Animal behaviour as a discipline possesses several features, including its inherent accessibility and appeal to the public, that may help it occupy a particularly successful niche within these developments. It has also established a repertoire of quantitative behavioural methodologies that can be used to document the public's responses to engagement initiatives. This kind of assessment is becoming increasingly important considering the enormous effort now being put into public engagement projects, whose effects are more often assumed than demonstrated. Here we report our first attempts to quantify relevant aspects of the behaviour of a sample of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who pass through the ‘Living Links to Human Evolution Research Centre’ in Edinburgh Zoo. This University research centre actively encourages the public to view ongoing primate research and associated science engagement activities. Focal follows of visitors and scan sampling showed substantial ‘dwell times’ in the Centre by common zoo standards and the addition of new engagement elements in a second year was accompanied by significantly increased overall dwell times, tripling for the most committed two thirds of visitors. Larger groups of visitors were found to spend more time in the Centre than smaller ones. Viewing live, active science was the most effective activity, shown to be enhanced by novel presentations of carefully constructed explanatory materials. The findings emphasise the importance and potential of zoos as public engagement centres for the biological sciences.
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影响因子：
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作者：
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通讯作者：
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影响因子：
64.8
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通讯作者：
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通讯作者：
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