Exploring new web-based tools to identify public interest in science

Ayelet Baram‐Tsabari · Elad Segev

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Science Education and Perceptions Information Retrieval and Search Behavior Misinformation and Its Impacts

Abstract

There is scant research-based evidence regarding what the public is interested in knowing about science, and more knowledge is needed to tailor relevant and engaging formal and free-choice science environments for different publics. This methodological paper describes the potential and limitations of three existing web-based tools — Google Trends, Google Zeitgeist, and Google Insights for Search — for PUS research. It shows how these tools can be used to (1) identify interests in science and pseudoscience, (2) conduct a cross-national comparison of popular science and pseudoscience-related searches and (3) discover possible motivations when searching for specific terms. Trends identified using analyses of online queries are discussed. These provide a bottom-up assessment of PUS, and may add another argument to the controversy regarding quantitative measures and the deficit model.

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1995Motivation in Education: Theory, Research, and Applications 2012Predicting the Present with Google Trends 2002Interest, learning, and the psychological processes that mediate their relationship.1993Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest 2007What can we learn from 25 years of PUS survey research? Liberating and expanding the agenda 1992Media performance: mass communication and the public interest 2004Public Understanding of, and Attitudes toward, Scientific Research: What We Know and What We Need to Know 1992The relation of interest to the motivation of behavior: A self-determination theory perspective.

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