Relative Cultural Distance and Public Understanding of Science

Public Understanding of Science is an area constituted by those scholars who essentially acquired expertise in various established academic disciplines and shifted their attention towards a few specific issues related to the science-society interface. The discipline though recognised as a legitimate area of research has not come out of all its teething problems associated with the formation of any new area. The mainstay, during the first phase of its development was the attitudinal surveys conducted in various countries. The objectives of these surveys were to measure the extent of scientific knowledge, probe public attitude towards science or scientists, and at times simply to explore the level of confidence or lack of confidence that a common citizen had in science. These surveys gradually turned into an important and regular activity in many countries. The debate that followed the first phase resulted in refinement of methodology, tools and the models of assessment of Public Understanding of Science. The PAUS group at NISTADS, India, has since 1989 worked on methodology suitable for carrying out surveys in developing countries. Subsequently, a culturally sensitive model for analysing the survey data was proposed by the group. The present article in the first section gives details of the model designated here as the 'cultural model of Public Understanding of Science'. The following sections, in detail, deal with the application of the model on data sets collected by two different organisations in India. The conclusions drawn confirm that the method of measuring cultural distance could be successfully applied to various data sets to draw meaningful inferences.