Why scientists "Go public" : insights from the situational theory of communication

To help explain the behavior of scientists as mass media sources, a mail questionnaire was sent in May 1985 to a national sample of 535 scientists actively conducting health-related research. Three hundred fifty-six scientists returned completed questionnaires for an overall response rate of 66.5%.

In a new application of Grunig's situational theory of communication, respondents indicated their levels of problem recognition, constraint recognition, and involvement concerning three aspects of their research: immediate practical or theoretical applications, impact on the delivery of health care, and social and ethical implications. Active and passive communication behavior for each of these research "situations" was then measured in terms of initiation and granting of contact with journalists and institutional public information officers (PIO's).

Seventy percent of the respondents reported some contact during their careers with a journalist, and 55% reported contact with a PIO. Passive communication was found to be a much more typical behavior for survey scientists than active communication. Both active and passive communication declined markedly from the immediate applications situation to the health care impact and the ethical implications situations. In support of the situational theory, both active and passive communication increased with an increase in problem recognition and decreased with an increase in constraint recognition; active communication increased markedly with an increase in level of involvement. Results of logistic regression analyses showed that the three situational variables had consistently stronger associations with reported behavior across situations than did demographic and attitudinal variables. A number of demographic and personal attribute variables, however, were significantly related to cross-situational communication activity.

As the latest in a limited series of empirical studies of scientists as mass media sources, the survey suggests an improving climate of cooperation among the key actors in the science communication process, with specific areas for further improvement. Science writers are advised to seek out more diligently information and viewpoints from less-visible scientist-sources; PIO's are challenged to demonstrate more convincingly to scientists their true value as channels for public communication; both journalists and PIO's are admonished to sharpen their scientific competence; and scientists are urged to resist overselling their research to reporters and to become more "media literate" themselves.