ABSTRACT
This part contains the chapters dealing directly with the results, methods, and future possibilities of surveys on the public understanding of science and technology, particularly the Eurobarometer survey. What makes this collection of contributions especially engaging is that their authors approach their common topicsurveys as a research instrument-in very different ways and try to advance it by tackling a variety of methodological and theoretical problems raised by the use of this kind of instrument. Because the Eurobarometer survey is a unique source of comparative data and because it can be combined with similar national surveys, questions about systematic cross-national comparison are stressed in chapters 4 through 6. In the first two chapters (4 and 5), surveys on the public understanding of science and technology are closely examined for patterns within the various member states of the EU (J.Durant et al.) as well as between those and other industrialized nations (J.Miller & R.Pardo) and for patterns that can be used as a heuristic aid for building hypotheses. Chapters 6 and 7 are each concerned with one of the two sides of this research: long-range objectives of expanding the theoretical and empirical foundations of the survey as a research instrument (M.Bauer) and substantive and methodological problems of large-scale surveys of the general public (A.Hamstra).
