Areas of overlap/differences within and between focus groups

Focus group 1

Focus group 1 was a pre-existing group, made up of ten women (one of two all-female groups), mostly in their late thirties or early forties, studying for a Certificate in

Preparatory Studies in Higher Education (CPSHE). This group was unique in that it was the only group where all the participants were parents (indeed, one of the purposes of the CPSHE course was to reintroduce the women into the workforce as they had all been at home full-time with young families for a number of years).

The communications lecturer agreed to let me to borrow her class for an afternoon. I arrived at the centre and met the women at 12.15pm just as they were going on their lunch break, I joined them for lunch which they ate sitting around one large table in the kitchen of the centre. The group was very good-humoured as they exchanged gossip and plans around the table.

After their usual 30-minute lunch break, the focus group began at 12.45pm. I

rearranged the classroom so that the participants were sitting around in a circle in order to make discussion easier.

Unsurprisingly for a group of parents, the women were very concerned with science as it is taught in schools, they had this in common with focus groups 9 and 10 and indeed with the focus groups made up of school students.

Perhaps the most striking feature of this focus group, and what made their discussions stand out from the others was that they expressed more mistrust in science than the other groups, going so far as to seriously discuss conspiracy theories, and their suspicions that they were being “kept in the dark”.

Focus group 2

This was the first focus group to be held, it comprised the smallest number of participants, with just three female participants and one male participant. This was because two participants, recruited through the online forum www.boards.ie did not turn up on the day (all communication with these participants was through e-mail and private messages on boards.ie, following their no-show, for all the other focus groups I made sure to ring them to make a personal contact).

What made this group different to the others was that this group was the most critical of science, and science policy and of science television programmes.

Focus group 3

Confey Community College in Leixlip Co. Kildare was one of two school groups. They differed from the adult groups in that they watched less television, and the Confey group in particular, when they did watch television, watched more satellite channels and fewer news programmes. They spoke in the focus group about preferring to spend time on the internet than watch television, although surprisingly, in the questionnaires on media use which they filled out before the focus group, the average time spent on the internet for this group was 62 minutes each day, while the overall average for the participants for all the focus groups was 92 minutes.

Like the other school group, and the parent-participants in the adult groups, the Confey students thought about and talked about science in terms of their school studies. This

group in particular were aware of the economics imperatives behind school science, and talked about how science and maths was promoted by media as school and college subjects in order to produce more scientists and engineers to support the economy.

Also like the other school group, students were keen that celebrities should present science programmes, the issue of celebrity presenters came up in adult focus groups as well, but in the adult groups the value of celebrity presenters was debated and disagreed about (particularly in focus group 10), while for the school groups it was universally agreed by the participants to be a good thing.

Also, in common with focus groups 7 and 8, the students in this focus group spoke about scientists as being somewhat removed from everyday concerns, and different to ordinary people.

Focus group 4

Focus group 4 was held with students from Coláiste na Carriage in Carrick, Co.

Donegal. The session was held in the science laboratory of the school. To begin with, this was the quietest of all the focus groups and they needed more prompting than any of the other groups to get started. Like the other school group, they watched less television than the adults, but unlike the other school group (and unlike most of the adult groups with the exception of focus group 6) they talked a lot about radio, and favoured it as a medium. With respect to science, they thought and talked about it in terms of their school studies, again like the Confey school group, and again

unsurprisingly for school students (even less unsurprisingly for this group as the focus group was held in the science laboratory of the school and they were asked to

participate by their science teacher). Again like the Confey group they agreed that more use should be made of celebrities for presenting science television programmes.

Focus group 5

Focus group 5 comprised a science blogger, a producer of science television

programmes, a regular attendee at the Alchemist Café, and five students of the MSc in science communication in Dublin City University.

In a similar way to how school students thought about science in terms of their studies, the MSc students—many of whom were recent science graduates—also thought of science in terms of their own studies. This group also, as a group with an ‘active interest in science’ differentiated between their own engagement with science

television programmes and with ‘public’ engagement or how ‘your ordinary people’ deal with science, disagreeing about the amount of interest that people had in science.

This group was also very influenced by the presence of the television producer, and because of that the discussion centred much more around the mechanics of television production, the technology required to produce animated sequences, the time pressure under which television journalists work and so on. In common with almost all other groups they talked about the value or lack of value of the generic images of

laboratories which are commonly used in television news reports.

Like focus group 3, this group talked about their expectations of different science programmes, and how these differed depending on what channel was broadcasting the programme.

Focus group 6

This was another ‘active’ group, made up of an education and outreach officer for a university research institute, a science communication student, a science teacher, and three laboratory scientists. It was an all-female group, although it was not intentionally so, three men who had agreed to attend did not show up to the session.

As a whole, this group was the most positive about science television programmes, they watched them regularly and enjoyed telling the group about particular episodes.

Some participants cited the science programmes they had watched as children as being the reason they became interested in science. This was also the only group that were keen on specialist science magazines. Again like many other groups, this group discussed school science a lot, they were unique in that they all told of very positive experiences they had had with science in school, this was not the case for the other focus groups.

Unsurprisingly, for a group where all but one participant had at least an undergraduate degree in science, this group was very critical of the generic science images used in news reports.

Focus Group 7

Participants in focus group 7 were aged between 30 and 49 years and educated to university degree level. They were positive about the benefits of science, and like focus group 1 and focus group 9 were particularly attentive to stories about scientific

research carried out in Ireland. Of all the groups, they had the strongest positive reaction to the stimulus clip of a section of RTÉ news. This group also spoke most about the enjoyment they derived from watching television, and about how the pleasure of enjoying a television programme was different to the (mostly information-gathering) ways they used other media.

Focus group 8

Participants in focus group 8 were aged over 50 years and educated to university degree level. The feature of this group that stood out was that they were the most politically engaged group. They viewed science, and scientific issues such as climate change, medical research and so on through a political lens, bringing up matters of government policy and funding for science without any prompting. Other groups

discussed policy, but not in as much depth as focus group 8. This group also gave very thoughtful (and indeed reflexive) responses to the question of ‘what is science?’, and took a broader view of science than the other groups.

Focus group 9

Participants in focus group 9 were aged over between 30 and 49 years and from mixed educational backgrounds. Like other groups, they thought of science in terms of school subjects, this could be expected from this age cohort which would contain several parents. Indeed the parents in this group were very enthusiastic about the science education that their children were receiving, especially in environmental matters.

In common with other groups, participants in focus group 9 used the stereotype of the

“nerdy scientist” in the discussion, and also expressed feelings of mistrust about scientific research, particularly about human nutrition. As with focus group 2,

participants in this group were critical of some television coverage of science, claiming that it was often used to market science and look for funding.

Focus group 10

Participants in focus group 8 were aged over 50 years and came from mixed educational backgrounds. This group, in common with many others, initially talked about science in terms of a school subject, acknowledging how much it had changed as a subject since they were at school. They continued to discuss how much science and technology had more of an effect on their everyday lives today than when they were younger. Perhaps unsurprisingly for an ‘older’ group, they spend a lot of time discussing and comparing the kind of science television programmes that are broadcast today and the ones they watched when they were younger (such as the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World, and RTÉ’s Eamon de Buitlear’s nature programmes).