Team:Reading/PublicEngagement
To engage with the public we carried out a survey to assess the public's opinion of synthetic biologyAn opportunity sample of 26 pedestrians in Reading town centre were surveyed with the following questionnaire.
Here is our raw survey data
This chart shows the average responses to questions 2-7, where the participant is asked for their level of agreement (on a scale of 1-10). The left hand chart groups the responses with 7 or more as for, 6-4 as neutral, and below 4 as against.
Almost the same number of participants were classed in for against and neutral, however those in the for group are distributed more heavily at the lower end and those in neutral and against are centred around the middle of their category.
These two graphs show that females on average report a marginally higher approval of GM technology. Also there is a large drop in the approval of people above 40.
Here is a graph showing the average approval rating for all questions for each individual, (x-axis indicates age group, y-the average approval across questions 2-7).
The 18 to 26 group holds the highest range of opinions with both the maximum and minimum possible overall responses. Most of the supporters are in the 18-26 age group, and without the three least supportive this age group has very hgih approval ratings. The 40+ age group is the most uniform in their average opinion and the least supportive.
This charts the average approval of each application of Synthetic biology over all participants.
Here the graph shows that people support synthetic biology for medical purposes more than for the growth of meat.
This chart indicates the percentage of participants who reported having their opinion changed by the survey. With increased age the participant became less likely to be influenced by a survey. These are also (as indicated earlier) less supportive of the technology to begin with.
The majority of people are opposed or ambivalent to synthetic biology however there does exist a population of supporters. The application has a strong effect on whether people support the technology with medical being more popular than meat production.People were also more supportive of this technology when they were asked about the specific applications rather than when just asked about "GMOs".
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