The life science researchers' attitudes toward science communication : motivation, hurdle, and way of promotion

摘要

In modern times, there is a growing need for scientists' active participation in science communication. However, scientists’ current attitudes toward science communication are unclear, despite the fact that scientists are one of the main actors of science communication. In order to consider the effective participation of scientists in science communication, a survey on scientists’ attitude is necessary. To this end, an Internet-based questionnaire survey to researchers in life science fields was conducted in 2008, and 1255 respondents were obtained. The results show the attitudes concerning 1) motivation, 2) hurdle for participating in communication, and 3) way of promoting communication, between strongly active scientists and less strongly active scientists. From the result, we considered the issues of science communication in two aspects: infrastructure and variety of awareness. These are important factors for promoting science communication: infrastructure which makes opportunities for communication constantly without the need for a lot of preparation by scientists, and new communication tools and designs especially of scientists who have less positive view of science communication.