LNG 1-1
What makes an ecologist? Unique academic practices of ecologists from the United States
Scientific literacy is known to be an important component of a knowledgeable, supportive, informed decision-making public. Citizen science is also a useful tool for increasing scientific literacy and in many cases, scientists have benefitted from gathering large quantities of information. The predominate discipline and practitioners engaging in citizen science are from the ecological or natural sciences. This begs the question, do ecologists have unique beliefs or academic practices than their peers in other disciplines? Specifically, those academic practices that relate to public engagement such as use of citizen science, beliefs and knowledge about the environment, and personal behaviors. A 40-item questionnaire was developed, which used Roper Views of the Nature of Science items, and pre-vetted items on trust and belief about publicly collected data (e.g. crowdsourcing/ citizen science), and personal behavior related to work. This survey was disseminated through various academic list serves, both discipline and institutional specific throughout the United States. Data was analyzed through StatPlus statistical package using PCA and Pearson’s Correlation Analysis. All work was approved by IRBProtocol # [E15-264].
Results/Conclusions
The survey had a 76% retention rate with 204 respondents self-identified as ecologists, and 211 respondents evenly distributed between seven common humanity and seven common physical science disciplines. 87% of the respondents were from the Midwest or Atlantic seaboard, with a 60/40 split between graduate students and faculty. From the data, we see an emergent phenomenon where ecologists have unique academic practices than their peers in other fields, regardless of institution or academic rank, in both beliefs and behaviors. Ecologists reported being most knowledgeable about environmental problems (r=0.26, n=415, p<0.001), knowing what is good for the environment (r=0.13, p=0.007), and considered themselves to be environmentalists (r=0.26,p<0.001) than their peers in other disciplines. In terms of academic practices, ecologists were more likely to travel beyond daily commuting for their work (r=-0.26, p<0.001) and report using scientific models than non-ecologists (r=-0.13, p=0.01). Additionally, ecologists were more willing to use publicly collected data (e.g. crowdsourcing/citizen science) as part of their research (r=-0.16,p=0.001) and participate in public outreach (r=-0.14, p=0.004).