Assessing public engagement with science in a university primate research centre in a national zoo.

ABSTRACT: Recent years have seen increasing encouragement by research institutions and funding bodies for scientists to actively engage with the public, who ultimately finance their work. Animal behaviour as a discipline possesses several features, including its inherent accessibility and appeal to the public, that may help it occupy a particularly successful niche within these developments. It has also established a repertoire of quantitative behavioural methodologies that can be used to document the public's responses to engagement initiatives. This kind of assessment is becoming increasingly important considering the enormous effort now being put into public engagement projects, whose effects are more often assumed than demonstrated. Here we report our first attempts to quantify relevant aspects

SUBMITTER: Bowler MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3319593 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature