Survey with the General Public
Survey on the awareness of GMOs in the general public
Objectives
Evaluation of the awareness of GMOs and Synthetic Biology in our daily lives in the general public.
Subjects
211 international participants answering our online survey from 12th August to 15th September.
Gender and Age structure
From 200 participants answering the question about age and gender 35.75% identified as males, 62.18% as females and 2.08% other or did not want to indicate. 73% of the participants were 24 or younger, 18.5% were between 25 and 54, and 4.50% were older than 54.
Methods
For the conduction and the evaluation of the survey QualtricsXM was used. Hereby, we designed our own anonymous questions, which were a mixture of open and single-/multiple choice questions, following the guidelines of the Harvard University Program on Survey Research and the survey privacy guidelines of Maastricht University.
Results
In the graphics shown above the most significant results of our survey were selected and summarized. As seen in the first graph, 62% of the participants of our survey knew already about the field of Synthetic Biology. However, still 38% have never heard about Synthetic Biology before. We furthermore asked the probands in which area(s) they expect Synthetic Biology and GMOs to be already included into our daily lives. The answer most people gave (149) was the use in medicine, closely followed by the use in agriculture (133), food (121) and chemical industry (118). Only 50 probands associated the household as an area of use with Synthetic Biology, which constitutes less than 25% of the total participants.
In the second part of the survey we asked the participants to name potential reasons and areas of use in the future of GMOs. Many answers were focussing on the problem of climate change. The probands indicated that GMOs could be used in agriculture to increase the robustness of plants, enhance their yields and become more nutritious. Furthermore, the use of GMOs in the medical field to prevent or cure diseases was mentioned very often. To establish an understanding of the fears and reasons against the use of GMOs in the general public, we also asked the participants share their thoughts on this topic. The biggest fear is the appearance of unexpected and unwanted side effects, which could on the one hand interact with our ecosystem and reduce biodiversity but could also direct interact with our body and make us sick. As another risk and fear about GMOs many probands worry about the nefarious use of GMOs, which potentially be developed as bioweapons and pose a global threat.
Our Conclusion
From the results of our survey we draw the following conclusions for us and our project:
- Synthetic Biology as a scientific field is better known in the general public than was expected. However, educating the general public is still required to prevent the spreading of a misconception of Synthetic Biology.
- The awareness of Synthetic Biology/GMOs that are part of most people’s daily lives should be increased through education about this field.
- The ideas about the beneficial use of GMOs reflect the research and aims of the scientific community.
- The fears and reasons against the use of GMOs are justifiable and therefore, scientists and political institutions need to take measures to prevent these fears from developing, but also the education of the general public is needed to contain their doubts and show that there are already preventive measures.
To take part as a team in these educational measures as mentioned above, we gave lectures and workshops and took part in events such as the PAS festival (Pleasure, Art and Science festival). We always included an interactive discussion were the audience could ask questions and also share and discuss their thoughts about Synthetic Biology and GMOs. Furthermore, we explained by means of the answers of this survey Synthetic Biology concept to prevent misconceptions and informed people about measures being taken to prevent negative effects of GMOs. Further information about our outreach events can be found in the Education & Engagement section.
