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

科学工作者队伍的扩大和多样化，以及公众对科学的信任和支持的增加，对于确保美国继续成为全球科学领域的领导者至关重要。实现这些目标可以通过鼓励科学家直接与公众互动来解决，这些活动既可以揭开研究过程的神秘面纱，又可以在从业者和公众之间建立对话。该项目侧重于确定影响研究人员参与公共科学事件的积极和消极因素，并将开发一种研究工具来了解科学家与公众参与的概况。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，这些概况将为量身定制的干预措施提供信息，例如科学传播培训、接触不同的受众以及支持科学家参与公众的建设性反馈。这些干预措施可能会增加更多样化的研究人员参与与公众持续的科学接触的可能性。这一迫切需要的项目的具体目标是：1)为研究人员的公众参与概况制定一个有效的量表，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，以确定塑造研究人员概况的因素，4)确定紧急的公众参与概况，以支持确定影响研究人员的关键因素？初步和持续参与公众对科学的参与。对研究人员个人资料或他们参与的事件的特征进行多变量分析，可能会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提供策略。这种策略将把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的过程。此外，本研究将为有效设计研究人员和公众参与的集体影响项目提供建议。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.