A public understanding of relevant and timely scientific research is imperative to fostering informed citizens. However, science communication can falter if experts presenting the information can’t discern what an audience needs in order to digest the message effectively and accurately. Learning what your audience needs requires empirical evidence, and understanding 1) how likely people are to interact with different forms of media (i.e. engagement) and 2) which forms of media are most effective in explaining scientific projects (i.e. comprehensibility) will reveal how to best communicate scientific topics to the public. As such, we designed a survey to determine whether medium choice impacted how effectively scientific content was received by adult, public audiences. A research project was described across three media types: an infographic, an interactive quiz, and a video clip. The three pieces of media were shown in random order, and questions using a Likert scale were asked to evaluate effectiveness in terms of 1) engagement and 2) comprehensibility. Basic questions pertaining to internet usage and demographics were also asked. Cumulative link ordinal regression models were used to determine which variables affected engagement and comprehension.
Results/Conclusions
Age together with media type was found to be the greatest driver for engagement, and how engaging respondents found a piece of media impacted how comprehensible they found the media. The quiz and video were both significantly less engaging than the infographic (β = -1.60, P < 0.001; β = -1.38, P < 0.001). While over 72% of respondents felt they could communicate the general idea of the project after viewing a piece of media, the video had the highest level of comprehension with 41% of respondents reporting they definitely could communicate the general idea of the project. The younger age groups preferred the infographic relative to the other two media types, while the older age groups preferred the video. Our results suggest that turning scientific projects into visually engaging infographics is an effective way to grab the public’s attention while participating in short videos can help to more comprehensibly communicate scientific work to the public, although investment in higher quality digital material may be necessary to reach younger generations. Scientists should focus on social media and maintaining their organization’s website, as over half of those surveyed use social media and/or specific organizations’ websites to learn about scientific topics.