A triangulated approach for understanding scientists' perceptions of public engagement with science.

Scientists are expected to engage with the public, especially when society faces challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change, but what public engagement means to scientists is not clear. We use a triangulated, mixed-methods approach combining survey and focus group data to gain insight into how pre-tenure and tenured scientists personally conceptualize public engagement. Our findings indicate that scientists' understanding of public engagement is similarly complex and diverse as the scholarly literature.

Public engagement: Faculty lived experiences and perspectives underscore barriers and a changing culture in academia.

The idea of faculty engaging in meaningful dialogue with different publics instead of simply communicating their research to interested audiences has gradually morphed from a novel concept to a mainstay within most parts of the academy. Given the wide variety of public engagement modalities, it may be unsurprising that we still lack a comprehensive and granular understanding of factors that influence faculty willingness to engage with public audiences. Those nuances are not always captured by quantitative surveys that rely on pre-determined categories to assess scholars' willingness to engage.

How institutional factors at US land-grant universities impact scientists' public scholarship.

The call for public scholarship to emphasize the broader impacts of science has raised questions about how universities can support this work among their scientists. This study quantitatively assesses how institutional factors shape scientists' participation in public scholarship, a subset of public engagement focusing on scientists' involvement in public debate and democratic decision-making related to science policy. Based on a 2018 survey of scientists from 46 US land-grant universities ( = 6,242), hierarchical linear modeling results show that institutional factors, including tenure guidelines and the extent of government funding, play a minor role in influencing scientists' public scholarship participation.