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.

Assessing empathy development in medical education: a systematic review.

Context: Empathy in doctor-patient relationships is a familiar topic for medical scholars and a crucial goal for medical educators. Nonetheless, there are persistent disagreements in the research literature concerning how best to evaluate empathy among physicians, and whether empathy declines or increases across medical education. Some researchers have argued that the instruments used to study 'empathy' may not measure anything meaningful to clinical practice or patient satisfaction.

Making sense of autism: Progressive engagement with science among parents of young, recently diagnosed autistic children.

This exploratory study examines the significance of science to parents whose children were recently diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. It asks: (I) In what manner did science emerge in parents' concerns and resources as they attempted to understand and advocate for their children? (2) Did some parents engage with science in a qualitatively deeper or more intense manner? Using longitudinal data from interviews and a novel data collection strategy called engagement mapping, it shows that parents asked questions and used resources that were strongly associated with science, but these were vastly outnumbered by "near-science" concerns and resources that mingled meanings from science and daily life. Several parents in the study wove together concerns and resources in an iterative pattern referred to here as progressive engagement with science.

Outside the pipeline: reimagining science education for nonscientists.

Educational policy increasingly emphasizes knowledge and skills for the preprofessional "science pipeline" rather than helping students use science in daily life. We synthesize research on public engagement with science to develop a research-based plan for cultivating competent outsiders: nonscientists who can access and make sense of science relevant to their lives. Schools should help students access and interpret the science they need in response to specific practical problems, judge the credibility of scientific claims based on both evidence and institutional cues, and cultivate deep amateur involvement in science.