Survey

A link to our survey.

We were interested in investigating the general opinion and knowledge about synthetic biology among the public. In order to gain an overall understanding of people's thoughts about the subject, a survey was constructed and distributed on social media. The survey took into consideration age, gender, occupation, knowledge level and the source of the knowledge, as well as several ethical stances.

Hypothesis

Before we handed out the survey we had some presumptions about how the results would turn out. An expectation was that older people would have more of a sceptical attitude towards synthetic biology and GMO than younger people because synthetic biology and GMO would be more unknown fields for older people since it is rather new. We did not think that there would be any differences between the female and male participant’s opinions.

Another expectation was that people who gained their knowledge of synthetic biology and GMO from education would have a more positive attitude towards it than people who gained their knowledge from media. This is because we think that media often present a negative view, particularly when it comes to GMO. Synthetic biology is not as often discussed in media as GMO and therefore not as well known. Therefore a hypothesis was that people would be more familiar with the term GMO than with the term synthetic biology and have stronger opinions about GMO despite the similarities in properties between the two terms.

The field of use of synthetic biology we thought that people would be the most positive towards was medicine. We also thought that environmental remediation would be a field where people would approve of the use of synthetic biology. Another presumption we had was that people would be sceptical towards the use of synthetic biology in food industry and that they would be strictly against biological warfare.

We assumed that people would consider it more risky to use synthetic biology in animals and humans than in bacteria. Therefore our initial perception was that the majority of the participants would be positive to the idea of using bacteria in synthetic biology, more sceptical towards using it in animals and very sceptical towards using it in humans.

Method

In order to collect as much information of the public knowledge as possible, we chose to make an internet-based survey and spread it through social media. Having an internet based survey is an easy way of distributing it to as many as possible in a short amount of time. We also thought that it would improve the chances of getting a diverse participation. There was one survey in Swedish and one in English, with the same content. Both surveys were available to the public for the same amount of time, weeks 31 to 36.

All the questions were constructed to be as objective as possible to not affect people's opinions in any direction. There were some introductory questions about age, gender and occupation and also questions about people's knowledge and opinion about the terms synthetic biology and GMO. These were followed by questions concerning during which circumstances and in which organisms people would approve of synthetic biology. In conclusion we asked for people's opinions about our iGEM project and under which circumstances people would approve of it to be used. A 1-5 scale was used for opinion questions, where 5 was good and 1 bad. A positive opinion was defined by scores 4 and 5. A negative opinion was defined by scores 1 and 2. The average opinion of synthetic biology and GMO was studied for different age groups, gender and for different main sources of information. Data was analyzed and presented in different graphs, shown below.

Results

The survey was answered by 190 people

Discussion

Figure 1 to 4 gives insight into the participants of the survey. Most participants, 77% were from Sweden but we also had participants from many other countries. It was an even distribution of women and men (50% and 49%). The age group 20-29 years old was overrepresented with 66% and age groups 30-44 and 60+ were very small, 2 and 3% respectively. For occupation, students were overrepresented, 76%, especially students in higher education, 62%. People working constituted only 20% of the participants.

Some parts of our hypothesis were in accordance with the results we got from the survey while other parts turned out to be different. We thought that people would have a more positive attitude towards the term synthetic biology than the term GMO, mostly because of negative news coverage about GMO. This was in accordance with our results showing that 67% of the answering people had a positive approach to synthetic biology, while 62% had a positive approach to GMO. 6% had a negative approach to synthetic biology while 12% had a negative approach to GMO (Figure 7). The significant difference in view of the two terms could be an indicator of that people do not see the resemblance between them. The survey showed that the term GMO was more familiar than the term synthetic biology as expected, mean score value 4,1 and 3,6 respectively (Figure 5).

The correlation between age and the opinion of GMO and synthetic biology can be seen in Figure 8. The average opinion in the different age groups was very similar and showed that people in general had a positive attitude towards both terms. The results showed that the age group 30-44 years old was the most positive to GMO but the most sceptical to synthetic biology. However, this age group was very small, only 2% of the participants in the survey. All age groups except this group gave higher scores to synthetic biology than GMO. The group in the age 20-29 was the most positive to the term synthetic biology. A result that was a bit surprising was that the age group 60+ showed a very positive attitude to the terms GMO and synthetic biology. This did not correspond with our hypothesis. The number of people answering the survey from this age group was however low and therefore this result can not be considered significant. The correlation between gender and the opinion of GMO and synthetic biology is shown in figure 9. This showed that males were more positive toward both synthetic biology and GMO than women.

We thought that people who gained their information about synthetic biology and GMO from education would be slightly more positive towards it than people who got their knowledge from media and friends. The reasoning behind this was that people would have a deeper understanding of synthetic biology and GMO if they gained their knowledge from education and that it then might seem less frightening. As can be seen in Figure 10 this hypothesis was not in accordance with synthetic biology but in some degree in accordance for GMO.The average opinions of synthetic biology was similar for different main sources, average opinion ranged only between 3.7 (Education up to high school) and 4.2 (Higher education).

Average opinions of GMO varied slightly more for different main sources, average opinion ranged from 3.2 to 4.0. The group with media and friends/family as main source of information was more sceptical about GMO (average opinion 3.2 respectively 3.4) than the groups with education as main source (average opinion 3.7 and 4.0).With the similarities of the terms GMO and synthetic biology in mind, interestingly the group with most diverse average opinion of GMO (3.2) and synthetic biology (3.8) was the group with media as main source.

The field where most people would approve the use of synthetic biology was medicine (Figure 11). Also environmental remediation and food industry got high scores on this question, which was in accordance with what we expected. Only 1,6% thought that synthetic biology should not be used at all. We thought that more people would not approve of the use of synthetic biology at all. A very striking result was that people seemed to think that biological warfare is an area where the use of synthetic biology would be acceptable. More than 16% said that they would approve the use of synthetic biology for this purpose. This result was not expected and seems frightening to us. We hope that the high score on this alternative could be a misunderstanding of the question or lack of knowledge about what biological warfare implies.

The organism that would be the most acceptable for the use of synthetic biology according to the survey was bacteria (88%), but plants also got quite high scores (72%), which can be seen in Figure 12. A very surprising result was that around 38% would approve the use of synthetic biology in animals and 24% would approve of it in humans. Our expectations was that people would be much more sceptical about the use of synthetic biology in humans and in animals.

The survey showed that a big majority of the answering people thought positively of our project; 64% of the participants gave the project score 5 (Figure 13). Most of the participants would approve it in the lab (79%) and also in nature (61%) (Figure 14).

Sources of error

Some sources of error have been discussed above, e.g. the conceivable misinterpretation of the question considering biological warfare. That questions could have been interpreted in an other way than we intended is a risk that could interfere with the results. This is hard to avoid but we did our best to phrase the questions as clearly as possible.

A major source of error is the distribution of the survey. The survey results showed that around 36% had got their information about GMO and synthetic biology from higher education and we do not think that this is representative for the general public. Our expectations was that people with much knowledge about the field would be more positive about it and this seems to be true. The attitude to GMO and synthetic biology seen in the survey results were positive in general and an explanation to this could be that most people answering the survey already had deep knowledge in this field. This means that the distribution of the survey probably not was good enough to get an overview of the general opinion. The problem with spreading the survey on social media is that it first and foremost reaches the closest friends of the people spreading it. It is then probable that the survey only reaches persons with similar interests and opinions. It is also probable that people that chooses to answer a survey about synthetic biology has special interest or knowledge in this field and this gives a biassed view of the opinions about synthetic biology.