Assessing motivations and barriers to science outreach within academic science research settings: A mixed-methods survey

Abstract

The practice of science outreach is more necessary than ever. However, a disconnect exists between the stated goals for science outreach and its actual impact. In order to examine one potential source of this disconnect, we undertook a survey-based study to explore whether barriers to participation (either intrinsic or extrinsic) in science outreach exist within the academic community. We received responses to our survey from 530 individuals, the vast majority of whom engage in some type of science outreach activity on an annual basis. Those who engage in outreach report doing so for both personal and altruistic reasons, and having high (yet varied) levels of comfort with performing outreach activities. Respondents also report the existence of several significant yet surmountable barriers to participation, including lack of time and funding. Our findings demonstrate that both levels of participation in, and attitudes toward, science outreach within the academic community are generally favorable, suggesting that the general ineffectiveness of science outreach is due to other causes. We place our findings within the context of the broader science outreach, science communication and public engagement literature. We make recommendations on how existing approaches and infrastructure can, and must, be changed in order to improve the practice.

A study on biomedical researchers’ perspectives on public engagement in Southeast Asia

“…Our study reported barriers similar to those in previous studies, which include the lack of time, skills and an enabling environment to support public engagement. Unlike the studies that reported time constraint as the greatest barrier ( Ho et al ., 2020 ; Iqbal & Kar, 2022 ; Woitowich et al ., 2022 ), respondents in our study percieved, time as a smaller barrier compared to the lack of skills. In contrast to our finding, the lack of skill was not at all reported as a barrier in a study by Woitowich et al ., 2022 .…”

“…Unlike the studies that reported time constraint as the greatest barrier ( Ho et al ., 2020 ; Iqbal & Kar, 2022 ; Woitowich et al ., 2022 ), respondents in our study percieved, time as a smaller barrier compared to the lack of skills. In contrast to our finding, the lack of skill was not at all reported as a barrier in a study by Woitowich et al ., 2022 . We interpret this difference resulting from the fact that in situations where public engagement is more commonly practiced and supported, lack of time is a greater barrier than capacity.…”

“…These factors commonly include time constraints, lack of funding, lack of skills, lack of opportunities, lack of enabling environments, etc. ( Cerrato et al , 2018 ; Ho et al , 2020 ; Iqbal & Kar, 2022 ; Poliakoff & Webb, 2007 ; Riley et al , 2022 ; Woitowich et al , 2022 ). However, the environment for public engagement in the context of Southeast Asia is still largely unexplored.…”

The importance of promoting scientific advocacy & outreach for trainees

“…Despite the many benefits of performing advocacy and outreach, only 40% of graduate students and 17% of postdoctoral fellows report engaging in these activities on a regular basis. The most highly cited barriers to participation include lack of time, funding, and awareness of the opportunities that fit within their time and budgetary constraints [14]. Many trainees are unaware of the many fantastic options for neuroscience and neuropsychology trainees to participate in outreach -from local community engagement, to advocacy on a national level (Fig.…”

Vitaport: A Learning and Artistic Path for Public Outreach on Transporter Biology, Health and Drug Discovery

“…Many scientists enjoy this type of activity and have a positive attitude towards it, however, many burdens hinder their engagement, such as lack of time, resources, adequate training and support of supervisors or institutions. [7,8] Despite the challenges and complexity of this field, the NCCR TransCure increasingly worked on science communication during its lifetime (see Section 1.1). In this paper, we share our experiences with the latest and largest of our outreach activities, namely the realization of the learning path 'Vitaport: what our body transports', that led us to discover the potential of the collaboration between science and art.…”