Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Wellcome Trust Monitor is a unique survey of UK adults' (and in some waves, young people's) views around science and biomedical research. The findings are representative of the UK population and provide fresh and significant insights to inform science communication practice and how research priorities might be shaped, building a better understanding of the social context of biomedical research. The survey is repeated every three years and a large proportion of the questions recur in each wave. The aim of this tracking survey is to build a high-quality evidence base that explores trends and variations across time on both general scientific and medical themes and specific societal issues. This robust study also seeks to develop a more systematic approach to describing and understanding current interest in, attitudes towards and knowledge of science and biomedical research. There is flexibility within each wave to include a number of additional questions to explore new and topical areas of interest. Further information is available from the Wellcome Trust Monitor webpage.
The Wellcome Trust Monitor 2, 2012 is the second survey in the series and was conducted in 2012 by Ipsos MORI. This wave of the survey was designed to provide comparability with findings from the baseline survey, carried out in 2009. The survey also aimed to build on the first wave, by refining the questionnaire and approach to maximise the level and quality of response from respondents. For the second edition (July 2014) two variables 'hedqual' and 'hedqualad' were replaced with variable 'hedqual_rev' and 'hedqualad_rev'. The new variables provide separate coding than 'item not applicable' for those respondents with no qualifications. See documentation for further details.
Main Topics:
The second Wellcome Trust Monitor questionnaire built heavily on the first, and comprised questions on the following topics: Adults and young people:media usageawareness of and interest in medical researchknowledge of medical researchengagement with medical researchsources of information on medical researchexpectations and concerns for medical researchscientific literacyattitudes towards vaccinationsattitudes towards environment, nutrition and behaviour changeawareness of and attitudes towards cognitive enhancing drugsunderstand of and attitudes towards genetic researchAdults only:involvement in medical researchattitudes to science governanceYoung people only:out-of-school science-related activitiescurrent education and future career aspirationsexperience of school sciencefriends' and parents' interest in scienceattitudes to science as a career
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Both core and focused enumeration samples were used. See documentation for details.
Face-to-face interview
