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The University of Wisconsin Survey Center
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1800 University Ave. Rm 102
Madison, WI 53726
Nanotechnology Survey II - Public Awareness of Nanotechnology
CLIENT
Dietram Scheufele, UW-Madison School of Journalism
DESCRIPTION
This telephone survey is conducted with students from midwestern high schools, who participated in an in school research project during their civics classes. Most are now high school graduates, and many are college students. This survey is condcuted to follow up with the students regarding their impressions of their civics classes, and how they feel they shaped their current political and civic engagement. Approximately 400 of the 600 students eligible for the survey have already been interviewed, with the largest challenge being to find the students at this very mobile point in the life cycle. Further surveys with this group are planned around the upcoming presidential election.
PROJECT DIRECTOR
Kelly Elver
DATES IN FIELD
June 2007 - Ocotober 2007.
Nanotechnology Survey II - Public Awareness of Nanotechnology
CLIENT
Dietram Scheufele, UW-Madison School of Journalism
DESCRIPTION
Conducted three years after the Professor Scheufele's original Nanotechnology survey, this was also an NSF funded joint project between the UW-Madison, Cornell University, and Penn State. This projoect was a national RDD survey of approximately 1000 interviews. The purpose of this survey is to further explore the linkages among various aspects of public response to new technologies and scientific developments, such as nanotechnology, and to track how public awareness of these technologies is changing over time.
PROJECT DIRECTOR
Kelly Elver
DATES IN FIELD
January 2007 - June 2007.
Resource Utilization Focus Groups
CLIENT
Rebecca Sandefur, Professor, Department of Sociology, Stanford University
DESCRIPTION
Professor Sandefur's research focuses on people's experiences as they decide how to handle economic or legal problems in their lives. In particular, she investigates differences between poor and non-poor persons' responses to those situations, and the specific case of opportunities not taken although they are available.
The UWSC has conducted ten focus groups (four in Madison, Wisconsin, and six in Peoria, Illinois) to gather information on these topics. The project has required telephone recruitment of participants in specified income categories. One unique challenge for these groups has been to elicit discussion of times when a person took no action or decided against a certain response to a problem. Successful collection of focus group data on these "non-events" has been achieved through pilot testing and ongoing collaborative development of questions, careful moderation, and research on social services in the cities studied.
PROJECT DIRECTOR
Robert Cradock
DATES IN FIELD
Fall 2005, Fall 2007.