ABSTRACT
Public consultations are participatory mechanisms aimed at promoting public dialogue and informing public policy. This chapter describes the public consultations held in the framework of the CONCISE project for collecting the empirical data on which the analyses performed in this book are based. The main goal was to gather qualitative data on the means and channels through which European citizens acquire science-related knowledge and how these influence their opinions and perceptions of four socially relevant topics: vaccines, CAM, GMOs and climate change. In 2019, five public consultations were held in Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Italy and Portugal so as to explore the views of nearly 500 citizens, thus contributing to the development of a standard for carrying out such consultations on science communication.
