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Exploring a Black Box : Cross-National Study of Visit Effects on Visitors to Large Physics Research Centers in Europe Federico Neresini, Kostas Dimopoulos, Monika Kallfass and Hans Peter Peters Science Communication 2009 30: 506 originally published online 6 March 2009 DOI: 10.1177/1075547009332650 The online version of this article can be found at: http://scx.sagepub.com/content/30/4/506

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Exploring a Black Box Cross-National Study of Visit Effects on Visitors to Large Physics Research Centers in Europe

Science Communication Volume 30 Number 4 June 2009 506-533 © 2009 Sage Publications 10.1177/1075547009332650 http://scx.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Federico Neresini University of Padova, Italy

Kostas Dimopoulos University of Peloponnese, Greece

Monika Kallfass Hans Peter Peters Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany

Results from a cross-national quantitative study of 3,301 visitors to four large physics research centers in Europe focus on short-term learning and motivational effects. The authors collected data from these visitors before and after visiting the centers as part of a research project funded by the European Union. Overall, visitors’ knowledge of the research centers increased. However, effects on learning of scientific concepts are not so clear. The visits mostly seem to reaffirm visitors’ prior attitudes and images related to the centers. The findings imply that these visits offer some learning potential and, for school students, increased motivation to enter a scientific profession, but in terms of altering visitors’ images they seem rather ineffective. Nevertheless, because of their uniqueness in allowing different publics an authentic glimpse of the production of scientific knowledge, visits to research centers remain an important public communication activity. Keywords: public visits; research center; cross-national study; short-term learning effects

M

any national and international research centers and research laboratories for science and technology offer regular visit programs and “Open Day” initiatives for the general public. Remarkable efforts and resources are put into these visit programs by the research institutions, and, in turn, each year thousands of visitors—for example, school classes, university students, and groups of nonexperts from the public—are taking 506


Neresini et al. / Large Physics Research Centers in Europe 507

the opportunity to look behind the scenes at scientific research in progress (e.g., more than 50,000 visitors at the four research centers in our study in 2001). However, despite the fact that these activities currently constitute an integral part of the everyday functioning of a number of research centers and have attracted growing numbers of visitors, we have only anecdotal evidence about the answers to even basic questions about these activities. Thus, with little systematic knowledge available about the social and cognitive processes that take place on the visitors’ part during these visits, these well-established forms of direct contact and communication between scientific institutions and the public rather evoke images of a black box, from both a scientific and a science communication point of view. While numerous studies about the impact of visits to science museums and science centers have been undertaken (Bitgood, Serrell, & Thompson, 1994; Garnett, 2003; Persson, 2000), and although some conditions under which visits to science museums and centers take place (e.g., exposure to a large amount of new knowledge in relatively short time, curatorship)1 are quite similar to the conditions during visits to research centers, the results from these studies also demonstrate the necessity for more efforts to try new methodological solutions and to gather further empirical evidence (Piscitelli & Anderson, 2000; Rennie & McClafferty, 1995). Furthermore, it is crucial to bear in mind the special nature of visits to research laboratories: Scientific research is actually being done at these centers, and therefore such visits give visitors the opportunity to come into “direct” contact with science and ongoing research rather than with an “artificial representation” of it, as is usually the case with visits to other sites of technoscientific interest, such as science museums and science and technology centers. This article addresses the problem of understanding the effects of public visits to large physics research laboratories. We draw on the results of the INside the Big Black Box (IN3B) research project funded by the European Union for the period from 2002 to 2004, which aimed at a systematic analysis of core aspects of visit programs by empirically analyzing and comparing visit data from national and international physics research centers in four European countries: DESY, Hamburg, Germany; DEMOKRITOS, Athens, Greece; LNGS, National Laboratory of Gran Sasso, L’Aquila, Italy; and CERN, Geneva, Switzerland/France.2

General Structure of Standard Visits to the Research Centers Our study analyzes standard visits offered by the four research centers in their regular visit program. As one would assume, the program for these


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standard visits varies among the four research centers according to each research center’s objectives, organizational structure, and type of research. However, despite this variability, there are some striking similarities that to our knowledge can also be found at other scientific research centers. These similarities, which concern the general approach and visit structure, the main target group for the standard visit program (school students), the involvement of (mainly doctoral) students as visit guides, the guides’ presentation of scientific information, and so on, may in part result from the international networking of the research centers and the way in which they learn from each other’s public relations or outreach activities. Also, the similar activities and objects presented, which in our case are ongoing scientific research in physics and the related extraordinary scientific instruments in use at the research centers, could lead to a rather standardized approach to the visits, neglecting alternative ways of approaching the visit. Below we present the typical path followed by the visitors to the four physics research centers studied during regular visits, emphasizing their common features and reporting their differences only when these differences are considered important for their effects on visitors. The overall duration of the visits ranges from 1.5 hours in the case of DEMOKRITOS to 2.5 hours in the case of DESY, and the visits are generally structured into three main parts. In the introductory phase, with the help of one or more guides (usually doctoral students or PR staff), visitors are led to a seminar or conference room where they receive a short presentation in the form of an oral lecture, sometimes supported by additional material such as slides, leaflets, brochures, and short videos about the history, the research activities, and/or the institutional structure of the research center (only in the case of DEMOKRITOS is this phase at the end of the visit). At the end of this phase, visitors can pose questions and discuss issues raised during the presentations with the guides. Therefore, the purposes of this phase seem to be to familiarize the visitors with the research profile of the research center and to inform them about the structure of the visit. The second phase forms the main part of the visit where smaller groups of visitors are guided around some of the scientific facilities of the research center. Only in the case of DEMOKRITOS do the visitors follow the tour as one group. The tour includes several stops, at each of which visitors have the chance to hear a short presentation by the visit guide or a different scientist about (a) the basic scientific concepts and theories underlying the research activities, (b) the technical arrangements and safety measures taken for conducting these activities, and finally (c) their purpose. The visitors can pose any questions they wish at the end of each such short presentation. The



sequence of the visit can be altered by the guides depending on the particular circumstances in all the research centers except at LNGS, where visitors have to move into its underground laboratories in the Gran Sasso Mountain and for safety reasons must follow a predefined path. Thus, at all research centers visitors have a unique opportunity to come in contact with authentic conditions of scientific research. The last phase of the visit has the objective of helping visitors reflect on what they have learned so far and also in some cases (e.g., CERN and DESY) to provide them with extra promotional material. This phase usually takes the form of discussions among the visitors, the guides, and sometimes members of the scientific staff. During these discussions queries can be clarified, worries about safety issues can be dispelled, and ethical and social dimensions of research can be touched on.

Method Survey Design for the IN3B EU Project In the IN3B project, PR staff at each of the four research centers collaborated with social scientists from a different scientific institution in each participating country. For the surveys at the research centers, a mixture of qualitative and quantitative empirical methods was used. At each center, a large quantitative survey was carried out. In total, 3,301 visitors at all the research centers were interviewed twice by a self-administered questionnaire, once directly before and once again immediately after the visit. In addition to this main quantitative study, two qualitative methods were also applied at each center: immediately after the visit, some visitors (159 cases at all the centers) were interviewed in semistructured in-depth interviews, and in ethnographic observations a few visitor groups (40 cases for all the centers) were observed during their visit. In addition, interviews were conducted with the PR coordinators of the four research centers, and relevant statistics and documentation from the research centers were analyzed in order to identify the research centers’ objectives behind their regular visit programs. This combination of several quantitative and qualitative methods used in the IN3B project allowed us to study a variety of aspects and dimensions of the visit programs. In this article, we present the analysis of visit effects as a core dimension of the visit activities, which is based on the quantitative survey of the IN3B



project, in particular on the comparison of visitor responses before and after the visit.

Sampling The quantitative surveys at the four research centers were carried out in the period 2002 to 2003. The construction of the sample of visitors was aimed to represent the typical structure of visitors on the standard visit program at the four research centers. Because the research centers organize their standard visit program mainly for groups of visitors rather than for individual visitors, the samples of the four centers are based on visitor groups (stratified clustered sampling), and all the members of each selected group received a questionnaire immediately before and after their visit. At the same time, each visitor in the sample was randomly allocated to either Subsample A or Subsample B. This division into two subsamples allowed us to pose some questions to one half of the visitor sample before the visit and the same questions to the other half of the sample after the visit. At DESY and DEMOKRITOS, the random allocation of visitors to either Subsample A or Subsample B was achieved by randomly distributing the numbered questionnaires to the members of a visiting group before the visit while alternating between uneven (Subsample A) and even (Subsample B) questionnaire numbers. After the visit, each visitor received the second questionnaire with the same number as the first questionnaire received before the visit. In the cases of CERN and LNGS, the random assignment was based on groups (mainly school classes) instead of individuals, matching the two questionnaires through a specific code given to each visitor. The response rate was generally high (more than 95% at all the centers) because only very few visitors refused to complete the questionnaire before the visit and a slightly higher, but still small, number of visitors did not fill in the questionnaire after the visit. Of the selected visitors groups, the majority of visitors at each of the research centers are school students (Table 1) who are accompanied by their teachers. At CERN and DESY, the predominance of school students is lower because approximately 30% of the visitors are groups of adult visitors from the general public, including expert and nonexpert visitors, such as groups of staff from companies, hobby clubs, senior citizens, local community groups, parliamentarians, and so on. Especially at DESY, university students and particularly physics students are another important target group of the standard visit program (15% of the DESY visitors).



Table 1 Sample of Visitors

CERN, Switzerland/ DEMOKRITOS, DESY, France Greece Germany % % %

Visitor type School students 62.2 91.7 52.5 Students (universities) 0.3 0.8 15.0 Teachers (schools) 4.2 2.4 4.3 Other visitors 33.2 5.1 28.2 Age 19 or younger 63.1 90.0 49.7 20 to 29 years 4.2 3.2 20.2 30 to 45 years 7.2 2.8 7.7 46 to 60 years 14.4 2.7 6.9 Older than 60 years 11.0 1.3 15.5 Gender Male 51.5 45.3 68.3 Female 48.5 54.7 31.7 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 Sample size (n) 808 900 959

LNGS, Italy % 82.9 0.9 4.3 11.9 76.9 7.8

}

15.3

49.0 51.0 100.0 634

The organization of the majority of visits as group visits also implies that not necessarily all the visitors in the group actually wish to visit the center. Nearly 20% of the visitors indicated that they had no opportunity to opt out of the visit. This applies especially for school students, who usually are obliged to take part in the visit as a school activity. Most visitors are first-time visitors, but up to 10% of the visitors (e.g., school teachers, who come with different school classes) had already visited the research center before. The gender distribution among the visitors is balanced, with the exception of DESY visitors (Table 1). There, we find a rather traditional predominance of male visitors linked to the subject area of physics, as is also found in the advanced physics courses (so-called Physik Leistungskurse) at German schools, for example, or for Italian and Greek university students.

The Effects of a Visit As part of the general problem of evaluating the effects of science communication, the analysis of the impact on nonexperts from visiting



a center for scientific research presents great difficulties, if one takes into account both the research aims and the methodological difficulties involved. First, in regard to the research aims, what exactly we are looking for is not immediately apparent when we try to evaluate visit effects. Second, evaluating impact is very challenging from a methodological point of view (Gascoigne & Metcalfe, 2001; Neresini & Pellegrini, 2008; Rennie & McClafferty, 1996; Storksdieck & Falk, 2004). As Miller (1987) put it, “If we want people to carry away something, we ought to be able to define what it is and measure it” (p. 125). Specifically for the question of aims, if our purpose is to identify changes in visitors’ scientific knowledge, it is clear that visitors are expected to answer questions mainly derived from deficit model assumptions. However, although visits could be considered as a tool for increasing interest in science also based on the framework of the deficit model, at the same time they could be regarded, for example, as an attempt to engage people with science in order to promote their participation in shaping scientific research processes. In the latter case, it is less important how much knowledge can be gained by the visitors but more important what kind of motivation can be generated or reinforced by these experiences instead. Thus, trying to identify an increase in knowledge is not the same as exploring whether the public is more engaged in science as a consequence of visiting a research laboratory. In this article, we focus on effects that are related to the aims largely shared by all the research centers as far as their visits program is concerned. In fact, the preliminary interviews with the PR staff made clear that all four centers share aims such as (a) informing the public about ongoing research activities, (b) stimulating interest in science, (c) channeling scientific contents, and (d) encouraging a positive attitude toward research centers and research.

Method for the Analysis of Visit Effects In line with the aims of the visit programs at the research centers involved in the project, the empirical research was designed to monitor different dimensions in regard to, • Visitors’ knowledge of the research center and of the research activities being carried out there • Their knowledge of fundamental physics concepts



• Visitors’ image of the research center and of the research carried out at the center • Their interest in scientific research

The close connection between the aims and effects of the visits introduces another very important analytical dimension—whether the identified effects are in line with the expectations of the visit organizers in general terms, and we therefore asked ourselves what can be reasonably expected from the way visits are currently designed and organized. Answering this question is difficult because of its theoretical and methodological implications and also because the research centers involved in the project obviously pursue objectives that can partially coincide but are nonetheless articulated differently depending on each context, organizational structure, and type of research. For these reasons, the present article is limited to describing mainly cognitive effects observed at the different centers and provides some reflections on their consistency with the general shared aims. Thus, the comparative presentation of data should not be understood in terms of emphasizing differences among the centers—which can be expected right from the beginning—but in terms of pointing out similarities. Such similarities could, to the extent that they were identified, reduce the dependency of results on the local context—that is, the specific character of a research center and of its visits program—hence making them more suitable for generalization. However, at the same time our emphasis on similarities is intended to keep our analysis sensitive to potentially striking differences among the research centers.3 Because a comparative study such as the one presented here could raise interest in comparing and assessing the institutions involved, it is of crucial importance to recognize that the data from our study do not represent any kind of quality measurement of the research centers studied or their PR activities, nor can they be regarded as an evaluation of the visit program of the research centers. The data collected in this study provide information on visitors’ perceptions and the effects of the visit on these perceptions. The analysis of visit effects on the visitors uses two approaches. The first approach follows a simple experimental logic and uses a one-factorial design with two groups (Bortz & Döring, 2002, p. 528). Visitors were randomly split into two subsamples of equal size. In one subsample, a number of questions were asked before the visit (control group), whereas in the second subsample the same questions were asked after the visit (treatment group). Because of the random assignment of “test participants” (visitors) to one group or the other, differences in the responses to questions



between the two groups can be attributed to the “treatment” (i.e., the visit) if they are statistically significant. In comparison to the possible alternative of measuring the same variables twice in the same group of visitors—before and after the visit—this experimental approach has an important advantage: It rules out as an explanation for differences between the before-and-after measurement any learning or attention effects resulting from the repeated presentation of the same questions. The second approach we used is to analyze the answers given by the same visitors at different times in the survey in order to discover any changes that might have occurred and could possibly be attributed to the visit. This approach seems to be more straightforward than the one described before, but it has the disadvantage that the first measurements affect the subsequent ones, for example, by changing the interviewees’ attention structure. By using both of these approaches to measure the effects of the visits, the disadvantages of the two methods are compensated for to a certain degree.

Results Effects of the Visits on Visitors’ Knowledge of the Research Center and on the Science Carried Out at the Center In terms of visitors’ knowledge of the features and activities of the research center visited, the effects of the visit are quite apparent. The questionnaire administered before and after the visit aimed at evaluating— among other things—the knowledge of research activities carried out at the center in focusing on how the scientific experiments were organized.4 In the case of DESY, for example, it was asked whether the use of magnets at a temperature of –269°C was because of security reasons or hygiene or the need to produce extremely high magnetic fields (correct answer); in the case of LNGS, the visitors were asked whether the location of laboratories under the Gran Sasso Mountain was related to the need to keep the temperature constant, to security reasons, or to the need to minimize interference of cosmic rays (correct answer). Table 2 shows that a clear increase in correct responses was observed after the visit. A clear trend toward an increase in correct answers is also evident for questions about the purposes of the research activities and the actual contents of research activities carried out at the research centers. As Tables 3 and 4 show, this is a fairly consolidated result because a consistent pattern emerges for the items used for all research centers.



Table 2 Knowledge About Topics Related to the Research Done by the Research Center: Comparison Between Before the Visit Subsample (B) and After the Visit Subsample (A) DEMOKRITOS, Greece DESY, Germany

B A % %

Correct answer Wrong answer Don’t know Total Sample size (n)

38.1 61.9 — 100.0 450

65.8* 34.2 — 100.0 450

B A % % 53.5 9.4 37.1 100.0 480

70.4* 10.2 19.4 100.0 479

LNGS, Italy B A % % 65.7 18.8 15.5 100.0 309

94.6* 4.4 1.0 100.0 313

Note: Data about CERN are not available. Questions posed (English translations of the original text): DEMOKRITOS: “The research center studies subjects that are relevant to the following sciences: biology, physics, seismology (correct answers), informatics (wrong answer).” DESY: “Why does DESY use magnets at a temperature of –269°C? To produce extremely high magnetic fields (correct answer), for security reasons (wrong answer), to keep them free from bacteria (wrong answer).” LNGS: “Why does LNGS carry out its experiments underground? To minimize interference from cosmic rays (correct answer), for security reasons (wrong answer), because these experiments require a constant temperature (wrong answer).” *p < .001 (adjusted level of significance according to the Bonferroni method of multiple hypotheses testing; see Neter, Wasserman, & Kutner, 1990).

With a view to the implications this could have for the learning process activated by the visit, it is interesting to note that not only correct responses tend to increase after the visit but in some cases also incorrect responses as well, although to a lesser degree, whereas the values for “don’t know” consistently decrease after the visit (Tables 2 to 4). Thus, it is clear that a considerable number of those visitors who are uncertain before the visit give correct answers after the visit, but some of them move to the wrong response (range = 0.2% to 11.5% among the research centers). For these visitors, the visit has the effect of reducing doubts while increasing errors at the same time. This is a problematic change because it is known that having doubts and being open to doubts is one of the preliminary conditions for learning. However, despite this shift from “don’t know” answers to incorrect answers, the data confirm a clear increase of knowledge about the research center and the research done there after the visit.



Table 3 Level of Knowledge About the Purposes of the Research Activities at the Research Centers (Items 1 to 3): Comparison Between Before the Visit Subsample (B) and After the Visit Subsample (A)

CERN, Switzerland/ DEMOKRITOS, DESY, France Greece Germany

LNGS, Italy

B A % %

B A % %

B A % %

B A % %

Item 1 Correct answer 39.7 86.4* 17.7 46.2* 54.4 78.9* 44.4 Wrong answer 5.8 3.1 14.7 26.2 2.1 1.7 2.9 Don’t know 54.4 10.4 67.7 27.6 43.5 19.3 52.7 Item 2 Correct answer 43.6 80.2* 41.6 56.8* 53.8 74.3* 54.8 Wrong answer 23.4 9.4 5.5 14.7 13.8 5.0 19.4 Don’t know 33.0 10.4 52.9 28.5 32.5 20.7 25.8 Item 3 Correct answer 69.9 92.2* 16.8 58.7* 78.3 86.2* 71.3 Wrong answer 2.7 1.8 6.2 8.9 1.5 1.7 3.5 Don’t know 27.5 6.0 77.0 32.4 20.2 12.1 25.2 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Sample size (n) 404 404 450 450 479 480 310

82.0* 0.6 17.4 74.3* 14.0 11.7 82.6* 6.8 10.6 100.0 310

Note: Questions posed (English translations): CERN, LNGS: Item 1: “The center was set up during the Second World War to study nuclear energy” (correct answer = no). Item 2: “The main purpose of the center is to study nuclear fusion” (correct answer = no). Item 3: “The main purpose of the center is to discover the ultimate components of matter” (correct answer = yes). DEMOKRITOS: Item 1: “The center’s aim is combining research with industry and production” (correct answer = true). Item 2: “The center makes experiments to study new materials” (correct answer = true). Item 3: “The center has been in operation since 1990” (correct answer = false). DESY: Item 1: “DESY was founded during the Second World War to study nuclear weapons” (correct answer = no). Item 2: “DESY’s main purpose is to study nuclear fusion” (correct answer = no). Item 3: “DESY’s main purpose is to do research on the smallest particles of matter” (correct answer = yes). *p < .001 (adjusted level of significance according to the Bonferroni method of multiple hypotheses testing).

Increase in Knowledge About Some Fundamentals of Physics Another type of possible knowledge effects of the visits concerns the complex area of learning about fundamental physics concepts. It appears justified to expect an increase in visitors’ knowledge in this respect because



Table 4 Level of Knowledge About the Content of Research Carried Out at the Research Centers (Items 1 to 3): Comparison Between Before the Visit Subsample (B) and After the Visit Subsample (A)

CERN, Switzerland/ DEMOKRITOS, DESY, France Greece Germany

LNGS, Italy

B A % %

B A % %

B A % %

B A % %

Item 1 Correct answer 33.1 56.1* 40.0 78.6* 47.0 67.9* 23.7 Wrong answer 33.1 29.9 13.9 12.6 16.5 11.7 38.5 Don’t know 33.8 13.9 46.1 8.7 36.5 20.4 37.8 Item 2 Correct answer 62.9 85.2* 42.3 89.8* 58.7 65.2* 39.2 Wrong answer 8.6 9.1 7.1 3.7 10.6 15.0 22.5 Don’t know 28.4 5.7 50.6 6.5 30.7 19.8 38.3 Item 3 Correct answer 65.1 74.7* 55.9 59.2* 43.8 57.7* 52.1 Wrong answer 5.1 7.5 1.4 3.7 6.1 12.5 11.7 Don’t know 29.8 17.9 42.7 37.1 50.1 29.8 36.2 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Sample size (n) 404 404 450 450 479 480 310

59.7* 17.7 22.6 66.1* 20.2 13.7 89.0* 4.2 6.8 100.0 309

Note: Questions posed (English translations): CERN: Item 1: “The center develops new methods of using nuclear energy” (correct answer = no). Item 2: “The center makes experiments to understand how the universe evolved” (correct answer = yes) Item 3: “CERN uses particles accelerators to recreate Big Bang conditions in the laboratory” (correct answer = yes). DEMOKRITOS: Item 1: “The main purpose of this research center is to study nuclear fusion” (correct answer = false). Item 2: “One of the main purposes of this research center is to study subjects that are relevant to health” (correct answer = true). Item 3: “This research center collaborates with other centers all over the world” (correct answer = true). DESY: Item 1: “DESY explores new methods of using nuclear energy” (correct answer = no). Item 2: “DESY makes experiments to increase knowledge on how the universe evolved” (correct answer = yes). Item 3: “DESY produces anti-matter particles” (correct answer = yes). LNGS: Item 1: “The center develops new methods of using nuclear energy” (correct answer = no). Item 2: “The center makes experiments to understand how the universe evolved” (correct answer = yes). Item 3: “The location of the center minimises interference from cosmic rays” (correct answer = yes). *p < .001 (adjusted level of significance according to the Bonferroni method of multiple hypotheses testing).

during the visit they receive information and explanations about concepts that they have the opportunity to see applied in experiments and can then familiarize themselves with these concepts from several points of view.



In general, it is possible to say that after the visit some positive effects can also be noticed as far as this dimension is concerned, but these effects vary and are not so evident in all the cases (see Table 5). In certain cases, however, unclear—and to some extent also negative— effects were identified, similar to the ones described above for the effects on knowledge about the research center. For instance, the percentage of wrong responses about quarks among LNGS visitors increased after the visit (from 13.3% to 22.4%), and the “don’t know” responses also increased in some cases (for the question on electrons in all research centers). In a similar fashion, the percentage of correct responses to the question about electrons at DESY and about the structure of atoms at DEMOKRITOS decreased after the visit. These contradictory results can be attributed to a variety of reasons. First, it should be taken into account that not all topics are presented with the same intensity during the visits, and this can partly account for some of the differences. For instance, explanations offered by the guides and documentation available on neutrinos at LNGS were clearly more compre hensive than those regarding electrons, as the former play a crucial role in the understanding of the LNGS experiments. Second, variations in the initial understanding of a topic might influence the information gained from the visits in a significant way. In the case of DEMOKRITOS, for example, science teachers who accompanied a visitor group explained after the visit that some students who were familiar with the incomplete model taught at school that is restricted to the level of the nucleus description (with the electrons revolving around it) gave a correct answer before the visit, while after the visit these same students produced either false or “don’t know” answers, possibly as a result of the confusion caused by the description of a more detailed model of the atomic structure including some subatomic particles such as quarks, neutrinos, gluons, and W+, W–, Ζ 0 bosons presented at the TANDEM accelerator. Third, it is possible that some of the visitors interviewed through the questionnaire at the end of a visit, after having received such rich stimuli and information, felt almost obliged to abandon the more diplomatic “don’t know” answer they gave before the visit and tried to give a response despite still being uncertain. Fourth, because the majority of visitors at all four research centers are students at upper secondary schools, part of the variations across the centers could be because of the different structures and the treatment of topics in the school curricula of the different countries.



Table 5 Visitors’ Knowledge of Some Fundamentals of Physics (Items 1 to 4): Comparison Between Before the Visit Subsample (B) and After the Visit Subsample (A) DEMOKRITOS, Greece DESY, Germany

B A % %

B A % %

LNGS, Italy B A % %

Item 1: Electron (+) Correct answer 54.2 47.1* 41.9 39.7* 72.4 Wrong answer 3.6 4.2 6.3 7.9 3.2 Ambiguous answer 16.0 14.7 31.7 29.6 13.6 Don’t know 26.2 34.0 20.2 22.8 10.4 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Sample size (n) 450 450 480 479 315 Item 2: Quark (++) Correct answer 0.0 1.3 33.2 58.1* 28.0 Wrong answer 3.6 10.0 14.8 5.8 13.3 Ambiguous answer 2.0 14.0 20.5 17.3 20.9 Don’t know 94.4 74.7 31.5 18.8 37.8 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Sample size (n) 450 450 479 480 315 Item 3 (+++) —a — Correct answer 6.9 7.3 40.1 Wrong answer 17.8 17.6 18.0 Ambiguous answer 7.6 6.0 7.9 Don’t know 67.8 69.1 34.1 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 Sample size (n) 450 450 317 Item 4 (++++) — — Correct answer 2.9 7.8* 4.7 Wrong answer 9.8 12.0 15.5 Ambiguous answer 16.0 40.9 6.0 Don’t know 71.3 39.3 73.8 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 Sample size (n) 450 450 317

69.2* 6.2 7.1 17.5 100.0 314 30.2 22.4 10.0 37.4 100.0 314 57.7* 10.1 9.8 22.4 100.0 317 15.5* 31.2 7.3 46.1 100.0 317

Note: Data from CERN not available. Questions posed (English translations): What is . . . (Items 1 to 4)? (+) DEMOKRITOS = structure of the atom; (++) DEMOKRITOS = radiotherapy; (+++) DEMOKRITOS = half-life time, LNGS = neutrino; (++++) DEMOKRITOS = particle accelerator, LNGS = cosmic rays. a. Question not asked. *p < .001 (adjusted level of significance according to the Bonferroni method of multiple hypotheses testing).



Finally, another relevant factor could be that visits—especially school students’ visits—are often not prepared for by introductory lessons or preli minary documents. For DEMOKRITOS and DESY visitors, this is the case for 50% of the sample; for CERN visitors, this is the case for 35% and at LNGS for 22%. Given that many researchers have stressed the importance of previsit and follow-up activities (Kisiel, 2003), it could be argued that this lack can have a negative impact on the learning of scientific concepts during the visit.

Visitors’ Image of the Research Center and the Research Conducted There The visit programs, regarded as public relations activities by the research centers, are often connected with the aim of positively influencing the visitors’ image of the research center or even creating such a positive image among visitors. In our study, we considered image to be a concept similar to that of attitude, following the Fishbein-Ajzen model (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and understood image to be a multidimensional representation of an object on relevant evaluative dimensions, which implies—for each of the dimensions—a position on a bipolar scale of good versus bad. The visitors’ images of the research centers and their research first of all represent the visitors’ subjective normative beliefs. They are dependent on the characteristics of the research centers as well as on the visitors’ perceptions, expectations, and assessments, which will vary among the groups of visitors in different countries. We thus do not interpret these images as quality indicators of the research centers or their outreach activities. We measured two different images by using the methodological approach of the semantic differential. For each of the two image profiles, six pairs of contrasting adjectives with a scale in between were presented to the visitors in the questionnaires before and immediately after the visit. The respondents could then indicate on a 7-step scale the degree to which the contrasting adjectives described the research center itself and, in a similar but separate question, the research done at the center. Marks between the ends of the scale meant that to a certain degree both of the adjectives apply. Marks placed in closer proximity to one of the two contrasting adjectives at either end of the scale indicate that visitors judged this description to more accurately reflect their opinion. The image profile is then determined by the mean scores of the scales: Low scores mean negative evaluation, and high scores mean positive evaluation.5



Figure 1 Image of Research Centers se cre tive

CERN (CH / F)

o p en

se cre tive

DEMOKRITOS (GR)

o p en

u n tru stw o rth y

tru stw o rth y

u n tru stw o rth y

tru stw o rth y

in co m p e te n t

co m p e te n t

in co m p e te n t

co m p e te n t

h a rm fu l

b e ne ficial

w a ste fu l

e co no m ica l

risky -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 se cre tive

1.5 2.0 2.5

DESY (D)

sa fe

o p en

b e ne ficial

h a rm fu l

e co no m ica l

w a ste fu l risky -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 se cre tive

1.5 2.0 2.5

LNGS (I)

sa fe

o p en

u n tru stw o rth y

tru stw o rth y

u n tru stw o rth y

tru stw o rth y

in co m p e te n t

co m p e te n t

in co m p e te n t

co m p e te n t

h a rm fu l

b e ne ficial

w a ste fu l

e co no m ica l

risky -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0

1.5 2.0 2.5

sa fe B efore visit

b e ne ficial

h a rm fu l

e co no m ica l

w a ste fu l risky -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0

1.5 2.0 2.5

sa fe

A fter visit

When comparing the image profiles for the research centers measured after the visit to those measured before, we notice that the general pattern indicates a strong similarity (Figure 1). The differences in some dimensions, which indicate effects of the visit, are generally moderate and not consistent across research centers. Furthermore, they show negative as well as positive image changes. The aggregated image indices (Table 6, first row) confirm the dominant impression of similarity: the images of only two research centers changed significantly—one in the positive, the other in the negative direction—but even the changes that are statistically significant are rather small when compared to the range of the scales. For three of the four research centers, very limited effects can also be observed in regard to the image of the research done at the centers (Figure 2). Profiles measured before and after the visit are almost identical for three centers and result in statistically insignificant changes of the image index (Table 6, second row). The image of the research done at one of the centers, however, seems to be negatively affected by the visit because the image


522


0.17** 0.03

1.20 1.07

Statistical significance of difference (t test): **p < .01. ***p < .001.

1.22 0.92

1.05 0.88

Image Index 1 “research center” Image Index 2 “research”

1.23 0.80

0.03 –0.28***

1.27 0.68

1.35 0.81

0.08 0.14

B A M M Diff.

B A M M Diff.

B A M M Diff.

CERN, Switzerland/France DEMOKRITOS, Greece DESY, Germany

1.03 0.85

0.85 0.77

B A M M

Diff. –0.18** –0.08

LNGS, Italy

Table 6 Impact of Visits on Visitors’ Image of the Research Center (Index 1) and on Image of the Research Done at the Center (Index 2): Comparison Between Before the Visit Subsample (B) and After the Visit Subsample (A)


Figure 2 Image of Research Done at Research Centers CERN (CH / F)

outdated harmful poor

interest -driven

beneficial

harmful

beneficial

first class

poor

first class

exciting

boring -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5

outdated

DESY (D)

u p-to-date

outdated

economical

expensive

DEMOKRITOS (GR)

up-to-date

independent

economical

expensive

exciting

boring

independent interest -driven -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 LNGS (I)

up-to-date

outdated

harmful

beneficial

harmful

beneficial

poor

first class

poor

first class

economical

expensive boring interest -driven

exciting -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5

independent B efore visit

expensive boring

u p-to-date

economical exciting

interest -driven independent -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 A fter visit

profile measured after the visit is more negative in four of the six dimensions and is particularly distinct for the dimension of “boring-exciting.” The image index for that center thus shows a significant difference between the aggregate images measured before and after the visit. The conclusions that can be drawn from these results on the visit effects for the image profiles are twofold: Most effects are relatively small, and the effects are inconsistent in regard to the direction of the image changes.

Visitors’ Interest in Scientific Research As is the case with other activities that fall under the heading of “public communication of science,” a contribution toward raising interest in science would also be expected in the case of visits to research centers. This expectation is in fact made explicit in the definition of the objectives of the visits program by the staff responsible for these programs at the research centers studied. It is therefore particularly important to understand the extent to which such an effect can be generated by the visits. Figure 3



Figure 3 Level of Interest in Scientific Research: Comparison Between Before the Visit Subsample (B) and After the Visit Subsample (A) B efore the visit

A fter the visit

Very/rather strong interest in scientific research

90% 80% 70%

± 2 standard errors

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

CERN (CH/F)

DEMOKRITOS (GR)

DESY (D)

LNGS (I)

summarizes the data collected on this aspect at the four centers, again comparing the situation before and after the visit. We can notice a certain decline of interest in science during the visit, with the exception of DEMOKRITOS visitors. This can be regarded as a rather surprising result. As one likely reason, we can imagine some kind of saturation of the visitors’ interest in science directly after the visit because they had just completed an activity directed at “feeding” their interest in science. Another possibility could be that the visitors felt rather overwhelmed or exhausted by the encounter with science during the visit, either because of a cognitive overload by the new information they had encountered or because of a partial deflation of the mystical image of science that they might have had before the visit or some kind of disillusionment about science they might have experienced during the visit. We could also assume that contact with real science—that is, with the routine and not exciting aspect or aspects of scientific work during the visit—is the cause of this effect. And given that science is not always a



Figure 4 Intention of Becoming a Scientist: Comparison Between Before the Visit Subsample (B) and After the Visit Subsample (A) Scientist, not physicist (before)

Scientist, not physicist (after)

Physicist (before the visit)

Physicist (after the visit)

Would like to become a scientist

50% 45%

± 2 standard errors

40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% CERN (CH/F)

DEMOKRITOS (GR)

DESY (D)

LNGS (I)

passionate and interesting activity, this is not necessarily a negative effect because we can see this decreased interest as a necessary counterbalance to the method of presenting science to a nonexpert public as primarily entertainment. In the case of school students as a major target group at all research centers, we were also interested in their motivation to take up a career in science before and directly after the visit. After the visit, the number of school students who did not want to become a scientist decreased (Figure 4). This seems to be a rather positive effect from the visit, while the slightly lower number of students who wanted to become, in particular, a physicist after the visit (around 14% at all research centers) comes as a surprise, given that they had just concluded a visit to a physics laboratory.6 Therefore, the visit does not seem to motivate more school students to become physicists but rather to raise their interest in a science profession in general.



From this perspective, despite some apparent inconsistency in results, visits seem to represent one of the possible strategies, of course also combined with others, for counteracting the problem that has come to be known in recent years as “the crisis of scientific vocations.”7 In all of the research centers examined, in fact, visits seem to result in a general increase of interest in a scientific career on the part of school students, albeit not as significantly as expected. It should be noted, however, that the data here could be slightly underestimated because of the fact that the choice of a certain career seems a more specific option than enrolling for a university course—because it also includes those who do not intend to go to university. On the other hand, positive effects identified here should not be overestimated. It is important to remember not only that such effects will be reduced over time—a feature common to other cognitive effects—but also that the actual “translation” of these attitudes into behavior is far from straightforward.

Discussion The complex design of our study of effects enabled us to identify and measure several primarily short-term effects of visits to the four European research centers included in the study, and while some of these effects correspond well to the general expectations that the organizers of the visit programs would, for example, attribute to such public relations activities, some of the other effects we found are rather unexpected and require further analysis. The presentation of an extensive amount of scientific and technical information to mostly nonexpert visitor groups, many of them school students, usually forms a major part of the visits to all the four research centers studied. When looking for possible changes in visitors’ knowledge during the visit, on the one hand, we focused our attention on some fundamental concepts of science or physics. We found what could be described as a short-term learning effect of the visit, namely, that more visitors were able to correctly describe the scientific concepts after the visit.8 At the same time, but to a lesser degree, the number of false answers also increased. As similar effects were observed for other areas of knowledge we had asked about, for example, effects on visitors’ knowledge about the research center itself and the research done there, the results confirm a certain pattern: The visits succeed in improving some visitors’ knowledge. Simultaneously, the results reveal a tendency for some visitors to give



incorrect answers after their visit, which is perhaps because of their giving up uncertainty at the price of false certainty, which unfortunately could be a hindrance to their further learning. Alternatively, we can also assume that some visitors are apparently confused by the visit, possibly as a consequence of the amount and content of the information received during the visit or as a consequence of their knowledge before the visit. This is not surprising if we consider that knowledge is not a matter of storing discrete pieces of information in our mind but is on the contrary a complex process of framing and reframing information, a process that, on the one hand, reduces uncertainty and, on the other hand, opens new possibilities and therefore also introduces new uncertainties. One of the intended effects of the visit programs is to increase the visitors’ interest in science, and in this context we also analyzed our results for school students as a main target group of the visits, with respect to whether the visit increases their motivation to later become a physicist or a scientist. Although the effects may be different when analyzed in the long term, in all cases studied except one (DEMOKRITOS), a certain short-term decline of visitors’ interest in science can be noticed between the time before and the time after the visit. In this respect, a kind of “saturation effect” can be hypothesized: As we learned from our qualitative studies carried out in the IN3B project, the visitors can feel rather overwhelmed or exhausted by the encounter with science (or specifically physics) during the visit, and after the visit there could be a feeling of their interest in science being sated for the time being. When school students were asked before and after their visit about their motivation to later become a scientist or physicist, after the visit the number of school students who claimed to have no intention of becoming a scientist as a career decreases, and as a consequence the proportion of those taking a science career into consideration increases; this positive effect, however, is lower in the case of school students’ motivation to become a physicist. Therefore, beside the fact that the visits seem to reveal some lack of attractiveness concerning the work or profession of a physicist, an effect that should be analyzed in more detail, the visits seem to function well in motivating more school students to consider a science profession in general. This means that the visit programs and the research institutions behind them indeed play an important part in motivating young people to aspire to a science career. This effect becomes even more important if one considers that the vast majority of the students are in the upper secondary school, a level at which they have already fixed their future career orientations. Similar motivational effects have been also observed in other contexts when



scientists meet with school students. Specifically, a survey of over 1,000 scientists and engineers, conducted under the auspices of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom in 2004, showed that just over half (52%) had been influenced in their choice of career by a visit to a scientist’s or engineer’s place of work, and nearly one fourth (23%) had been influenced by a scientist or engineer visiting their school.9 Contrary, though, to some initial aims and hopes of staff responsible for the design of the visit programs, visits to research centers do not seem to have a massive—positive or negative—impact on the image of the research center visited or the research carried out there. In fact, the visits seem to have only a small and unclear effect on the visitors’ images and attitudes. We assume that several reasons contribute to quite clearly failing to achieve the desired effect and that primarily the complexity of the stimuli the visitors receive during the visit leads to a kind of leveling. First, we have to realize that to nonexperts the research centers tend to represent rather strange and perplexing environments, and being exposed to this environment possibly promotes mixed feelings. In the research centers studied, the scale of the research in terms of dimensions, costs, time, and complexity is almost beyond imagination to nonexperts, and so it could, on the one hand, be very impressive, but perhaps it might also raise doubts about the value of such (publicly funded) research and might lead to questions of how average citizens benefit from such research, especially if it is taken into consideration that scientific research competes with other pressing needs in society for public funding. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible for nonexperts to develop a deep understanding of the science during their visit. This can lead to visitors looking with admiration at the scientists who deal with all these complex things or else even experiencing a feeling of inferiority toward science that is so difficult to understand. Finally, because the creation and modification of images and attitudes are complex, primarily long-term processes, a single activity such as a visit to a research center might result in some transformation of the existing image, and our results indeed show some minor changes in the perception of research centers after the visit. But—based on these arguments and the results from our study—we have to conclude that visits to the research centers do not necessarily lead to a more positive image among the visitors. They rather seem to serve to stabilize visitors’ preattitudes, which are often already generally positive, rather than creating a positive image or reversing a negative one. We can see several implications following from these results on visit effects.



The potential of the visit program is its uniqueness within the context of different public communication activities such as public lectures, science festivals, cafés scientifiques, and so on: A visit to a research center is—at least to a major extent—an encounter with real science in the making, a glance at daily life in science by inviting people in (instead of reaching out) and allowing them to see for themselves what authentic science is like. In this special encounter with scientific reality, however, there can be several kinds of difficult factors as well: For example, during visits, it can be very noisy in the experimentation halls, sometimes the locations do not look very modern or tidy, the science presented may be confusing or boring or far too complicated to understand in a short period, and sometimes nothing seems to happen because not much from the ongoing experiments can really be seen during the visit. And there can be a tendency to focus the research center’s presentations on a rather selective view of science, not tailoring the presented information properly to the interests or needs of mainly nonexpert members of the public or expecting learning effects that can hardly be achieved by the visit programs. However, despite the difficul ties that visitors may encounter during their visits, our results confirm that the confrontation with this scientific reality, and not with a reproduction of it, seems to be a unique and invaluable asset for visitors, even if it does not mean a “trip to paradise” and can at times be a dry and dusty road for them to tread. This appreciation of the visits can be concluded from the facts that in our IN3B studies the large majority of visitors declared themselves highly satisfied after the visit, that for more than 90% of the visitors their visit was an opportunity to see what kind of research is done at the research centers, and that more than 70% of the visitors confirmed that the visit had been pleasant and interesting. Furthermore, the visitors’ appreciation of an encounter with “science in reality” or, in other words, of authenticity as the crucial quality of the visits also seems to interrelate with visitors’ views that the visit programs are seen as a kind of demonstration of the research center’s openness to the public and as a way of accounting for the public funds they receive. And it appears quite reasonable that these visitors’ views are also linked to the visitors’ generally high appreciation of research and the research center, which we found not only before but also after the visit. Some intriguing ambiguities that we encountered in a few of our results about the visit effects again stress the necessity of considering science communication as a very complex task. Nor, for example, when considering the effects, is it as straightforward as science communicators sometimes might wish to create a positive image of science, and our results do not



confirm that a—however comprehensive, and so on—presentation of scientific knowledge, when implicitly following the deficit model’s educational goal, is able to change the audience’s attitude toward science (Dickson, 2005). From the perspective of the public communication of science, this ambiguity or even lack of some desired effects of the visit may raise some doubts about the value of the visit program for the research centers. However, as indicated above, for us the results first and foremost point to interesting dimensions for further analysis rather than questioning the value of the visit program. For example, an improved understanding of visit effects instead of the previous “black box” view can support a reconsideration of the goals for such a public communication program. If the visits do not primarily serve the purpose of substantially changing the visitors’ image, other meaningful purposes that seem to be confirmed by visitors’ appreciation may be to offer access for different publics to the authentic reality of the centers’ research and scientific production, for example, to bring school students into contact with researchers at their workplace, to explain the fascinating and spectacular dimensions as well as the routine and perhaps even difficult sides of science and research to different publics, and to keep in touch with the public from the region around the research center. Reconsidering PR expectations for a public visit program and defining realistic goals as a consequence are therefore two of the means for practical improvement that we suggested in a summary of possible improvements for the visits.10 At the same time, this example also places the public visit program in the context of other public communication activities because differentiated and achievable goals can be regarded as equally important for all these activities, not only for the visit programs. Furthermore, our findings lead us to assume that the study of effects of other public communications activities will be equally worthwhile and may lead to some “surprises” similar to our study results. Thus, from the broader perspective of science and society and with a view to various new public communication activities that have been developed in a number of European countries to improve relations and communication between science and society (e.g., national science weeks, science festivals, “physics on stage,” “Wissenschaft im Dialog,” role models for scientists,11 science labs for school students), visits to research centers represent a more old-fashioned activity of direct communication with different publics. However, by giving different publics an authentic glimpse of the production of scientific knowledge and by responding to and encouraging their interest in science production, the public visit programs are unique and are very important within this canon of public communication



activities. And as a means of direct communication, they also offer great potential for dialogue and debate with different publics.

Notes 1. For major differences between visits to science museums and visits to research centers, see Dimopoulos and Koulaidis (2006). 2. The project IN3B (INside the Big Black Box) was funded by the European Commission under the VI Framework Programme. The following collaborated in this project: Monica De Pasquale-Jacobsson and Paola Catapano from CERN, Geneva; Vasilis Koulaidis, Kostas Dimopoulos, and Lida Arnellou from the University of Patras; Stella Efthimiopoulou from the Greek National Research Center DEMOKRITOS, Athens; Federico Neresini, Massimiano Bucchi, Giuseppe Pellegrini, and Francesca Forno from Observa–Science in Society, Vicenza; Roberta Antolini from Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso LNGS, L’Aquila; Monika Kallfass and Hans Peter Peters from Forschungszentrum Jülich, Programme Group MUT, Jülich; and Heiner Westermann from Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg. 3. This is the reason why we preferred to analyze the centers as separate case studies; therefore, we did not include an analysis across the centers and did not produce an aggregate data set. This approach is justified by the differences among the centers in some important dimensions that account to a certain extent for the variable results across the research centers, such as visit programs, types of visitors, type of physics research, and different teaching background for the school students. 4. In the following tables, the subsamples of visitors questioned before the visit are designated B for “before the visit”; the subsamples who were interviewed after the visit are termed A for “after the visit.” 5. In order to prevent response sets from introducing a systematic error, in about half of the adjective pairs the negative adjective was placed on the right, and for the other half on the left-hand side. For better readability, we recoded the values such that high values always mean a positive image and low values a negative image. Furthermore, we recoded the values such that the score of 0 represents the mathematical middle of the scale. In this article, we present the results using recoded values. With some caution (because the scales are not calibrated for a “neutral” middle), we can assume that negative values represent negative evaluations and positive values represent positive evaluations. 6. In the case of DEMOKRITOS, biology laboratories are also part of the visit. 7. This expression is usually used to indicate the fact that, since the 1980s, the progressive decline of enrollments in university science and technology programs has become a perceived serious problem in Europe and other industrialized countries (Eurobarometer 55.2, 2001). 8. For a general discussion of the conditions for learning during such visits, see Dimopoulos and Koulaidis (2006). 9. For more details, see http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?tip=1&id=2789. 10. In our final report on the IN3B project, we suggested a number of practical improvements for the visit programs that are mainly based on the results of our qualitative studies of the IN3B project. The report is available at http://www.observa.it/public/docs/IN3Breport.zip. 11. Such a scheme is presented by the U.K. Royal Society at http://royalsociety.org/page .asp?tip=1&id=2875.



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Neresini et al. / Large Physics Research Centers in Europe 533 Federico Neresini, PhD, teaches social research methodology and science, technology, and society at the University of Padua. His main research interests are in the area of the sociology of science, in particular public communication of science, social representations of science, and citizens’ participation in decision-making processes about scientific and technical issues. Kostas Dimopoulos, PhD, is an associate professor of learning materials in the Department of Social and Educational Policy, University of Peloponnese. He also teaches didactics of science at the Hellenic Open University. His current research interests concern the image of science and technology presented by the mass media as well as developing science communication and education materials for nonexperts. Monika Kallfass is a social scientist and senior researcher at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. Her research areas include public communication of science and technology and science PR. Hans Peter Peters, PhD, is a senior researcher at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, and adjunct professor of science journalism at the Free University of Berlin. His research focuses on public communication of science and technology, particularly on the sciencemedia interface.
