University scientists’ willingness to participate in public engagement: A concept explication

Becca Beets, Mikhaila N Calice, Lindsey Middleton, Dominique Brossard, Dietram A Scheufele, Luye Bao, Todd P Newman and Jo Handelsman

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: Public engagement is increasingly recognized as a critical responsibility of the scientific community. Scientists in academic settings are well positioned to lead these efforts, but they are not always willing or able to participate in engagement. Public engagement can encompass a range of activities that may require different resources and skills, and which may have different outcomes for both scientists and non-scientists. Therefore, understanding which activities scientists are willing to participate in is critical for supporting their engagement efforts at the institutional level. Using survey data from a case study of science faculty at a large land-grant university in the United States, we conduct a systematic concept explication to better understand the dimensions of public engagement activities that scientists are willing to participate in. Based on thirteen different activities, we define and analyze the reliability of five dimensions of engagement: public scholarship, educational activities, direct engagement with public audiences, stakeholder-focused collaboration, and industry engagement. We also examine the validity of these five dimensions and how factors including institutional culture and norms, professional status, and attitudes towards engagement relate to scientists’ willingness to participate in engagement. Our results provide a robust categorization of willingness to engage as a blueprint for future research in this space.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0337189 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 37189&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0337189

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0337189

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().