Citation

Baram-Tsabari A, Segev E. Public Underst. Sci. 2011; 20(1): 130-143.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Institute of Physics in association with the Science Museum, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0963662509346496

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

There is scant research-based evidence regarding what the public is interested in knowing about science, and more knowledge is needed to tailor relevant and engaging formal and free-choice science environments for different publics. This methodological paper describes the potential and limitations of three existing web-based tools — Google Trends, Google Zeitgeist, and Google Insights for Search — for PUS research. It shows how these tools can be used to (1) identify interests in science and pseudoscience, (2) conduct a cross-national comparison of popular science and pseudoscience-related searches and (3) discover possible motivations when searching for specific terms. Trends identified using analyses of online queries are discussed. These provide a bottom-up assessment of PUS, and may add another argument to the controversy regarding quantitative measures and the deficit model.