The Public Engagement of Academics – Experimental Evidence on the Attitudes of Professors

Expectations that academics contribute actively to public discussions have grown in recent years. These expectations are being justified on various grounds, ranging from the importance of scientific knowledge for solving societal challenges to obligations deduced from the public funding of higher education institutions. From the perspective of individual academics, engaging in public discussions can be seen to be at odds with the role of scientists and may imply reputational and other risks. The study seeks to shed light on this relation among external expectations, risks and academics’ attitudes toward their engagement with the public.

The study is designed as an information experiment integrated into an online survey of professors in Germany on interactions with their non-academic environment. The main outcome of the experiment is the respondents’ answer to the question whether academics in their own discipline should contribute less or more to public discussions in the future. Four pieces of information, each of them shown to a randomly selected group of survey participants, form the experiment’s treatments. The question that comprises the treatments and constitutes the experiment’s main outcome is preceded by two questions that elicit the prior knowledge of the information presented from all participants.

Participants in the control group are shown only the question constituting the experiment’s main outcome and an introductory sentence mentioning the growing relevance of science for public opinion formation and political decisions. Participants in the four treatment groups receive an additional piece of information presented between the introductory sentence and the question. Each piece of information relates to either expectations directed at academics and their public engagement or risks associated with such an engagement. The first two treatment groups receive information on the public opinion on the role of science in society from a poll conducted in Germany in 2019. The third treatment group receives information on the coverage of knowledge and technology transfer in the higher education legislation of the German federal states. The fourth treatment group receives information on two examples of negative consequences of the public engagement of two German professors during the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic.

The target population of the survey consists of all professors in Germany at state and ecclesiastical higher education institutions. This amounts to a total of around 44,600 individuals. Based on the results of other surveys of the same population and a field test of the survey instrument, a gross response rate of around 10 % is expected, leading to an expected number of observations of around 4,500. The randomization for the survey experiment takes place on the level of the individual. Upon opening the online survey, each participant is randomly assigned to either the control group or one of the four treatment groups by the survey application.