EAGER: Development of a Research Tool to Investigate Factors that Influence Researchers' Attitudes about Engagement in Public Science Events

科学劳动力的扩大和多样化，以及公众对科学的信任和支持，对于确保美国继续成为全球科学领导者至关重要。 实现这些目标可以通过鼓励科学家直接与公众互动，通过既揭开研究过程的神秘面纱，又在从业者和公众之间建立对话的活动来实现。该项目的重点是确定影响研究人员参与公共科学活动的积极和消极因素，并将开发一个研究工具，以了解科学家与公众接触的概况。 该研究工具将广泛应用于威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的研究人员作为测试人群，以探索哪些因素是研究人员通过科学与公众接触的关键动机。 反过来，这些简介将为量身定制的干预措施提供信息，如科学传播培训、接触不同的受众以及支持研究人员参与公众活动的建设性反馈。 这些干预措施可能会增加更多样化的研究人员参与公众持续科学参与的可能性。 EAGER项目的具体目标是：1）为研究人员的公众参与概况开发一个有效的量表，2）为所有威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的研究人员建立一个公众参与概况基线，无论过去是否参与公众参与科学，3）调查所有威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的研究人员参与公众参与科学后，以确定影响研究人员概况的因素，和4）确定紧急公众参与概况，以支持识别影响研究人员的关键因素？对研究人员的个人资料或他们参与的事件中的特征进行多变量分析，可以揭示预测研究人员参与的因素，从而为扩大和增加研究人员参与公众参与科学的策略提供信息。这种策略将使公众参与科学的设计从基于直觉和个人经验的过程转变为基于系统地吸引和维持研究人员参与公众参与科学的因素的数据。 此外，这项研究将提供建议，有效地设计集体影响计划，使研究人员和公众参与。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

Expansion and diversification of the scientific workforce, along with increasing public trust and support of science, are critical to ensure that the United States continues to be a global leader in science. Achieving these goals can be addressed by encouraging scientists to interact directly with the public through activities that both demystify the process of research and create dialog between practitioners and the public. This project focuses on identifying positive and negative factors influencing researchers' participation in public science events and will develop a research tool to understand profiles of scientists' engagement with the public. The research tool will be applied widely to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers as a test population to explore what factors are key motivations for why researchers do (or do not) engage with the public through science. These profiles, in turn, will inform tailored interventions such as science communication training, exposure to different audiences and constructive feedback that support researchers in public engagement. These interventions may increase the likelihood that a more diverse pool of researchers participate in sustained science engagement with the public. The specific aims of this EAGER project are to: 1) develop a validated scale for a public engagement profile for researchers, 2) establish a public engagement profile baseline for all UW-Madison campus researchers, regardless of past participation in public engagement with science, 3) survey all UW-Madison researchers following participation in public engagement with science to identify factors shaping researchers' profiles, and 4) identify emergent public engagement profiles to support identification of key factors influencing researchers? initial and sustained participation in public engagement with science.A multivariate analysis of features either in researchers' profiles or in the events in which they participate may reveal factors that predict researcher engagement, thereby informing tactics to broaden and increase researcher participation in public engagement with science. Such tactics would transform the design of public engagement in science from a process based on intuition and personal experience to one based on data on factors that systematically attract and sustain researchers' participation in public engagement with science. Additionally, this research will offer recommendations for the effective design of collective impact programs that engage researchers and the public.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.