40 million Americans rely on the internet as their primary source for news and information about science.

• When asked where they get most of their news and information about science, 20% of all Americans say they turn to the internet for most of their science news. That translates to 40 million adults.
• This is second only to television, which is cited by 41% of Americans as the place where they get most of their science news and information.
• Newspapers and magazines are each cited by 14% as their main sources for news and information about science.

For home broadband users, the internet and television are equally popular as sources for science news and information – and the internet leads the way for young broadband users.

Internet users with high-speed internet connections at home are equally as likely to cite the internet as TV as the media from which they get most of their science news.

• One third (33%) of home broadband users say they get most of their science news and information from TV, while 34% say the internet.
• Among adult home broadband users under the age of 30, the internet is the most popular source for science news and information. Some 44% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 say they get most of their science news from the internet and 32% in this group say that television is their main source for science news.

The internet is the source to which people would turn first if they need information on a specific scientific topic.

Each respondent to this survey received questions on one of three specific scientific topics: stem cell research, climate change, and origins of life on Earth. When asked what source they would use first if they needed to learn more about the topic, here is what they said:

• 67% of those receiving questions about stem cell research said they would turn to the internet first for information on this topic; 11% said the library.
• 59% of respondents receiving questions about climate change said they would turn to the internet first for information on this topic; 12% said the library.
• 42% of those answering questions about the origins of life on Earth said they would turn to the internet first for information on this topic; 19% said the library, and 11% said the Bible or church.

The internet is a research tool for 87% of online users. That translates to 128 million adults.

• 70% of internet users have used the internet to look up the meaning of a scientific concept or term.
• 68% have gone online to look for an answer to a question about a scientific concept or theory.
• 65% have used the internet to learn more about a science story or discovery first heard of offline.
• 55% have used the internet to complete a science assignment for school (for either oneself or a child).
• 52% have used the internet to check the accuracy of a scientific fact or statistic.
• 43% have downloaded scientific data, graphs, or charts from the internet.
• 37% have used the internet to compare different or opposing scientific theories.

This adds up to 87% of online users who have done at least one of these activities. Translated to the full adult population in America, that amounts to 128 million people who have used the internet to get some kind of scientific information.

Consumers of online science information often try to check the accuracy of scientific claims. Sometimes they use the internet for this purpose; other times they use offline sources.

• 62% of those who get science information online use other online information to check the reliability of scientific information.
• 54% of online science consumers use offline resources, like a journal or encyclopedia, to assess the reliability of science information.
• 54% of online science consumers go to the original source of the information or the original study it is based upon.

Fully 80% of those who have gotten science news and information online have engaged in at least one of these “fact-checking” activities. Although a majority of those who get science information online feel the internet is a reliable source for checking on science information, fully half of those who use an online source for fact-checking also use both of the other means to look further into a science fact.

Convenience plays a large role in drawing people to the internet for science information.

When asked what comes closest to describing why they get science news and information on the internet, here is what internet users who have ever gotten such information online said:

• 71% say they turn to the internet for science information because it is convenient.
• 13% say they turn to the internet because they believe information there is more accurate than other sources.
• 12% say they turn to the internet because information is available online that is not available elsewhere.

Happenstance also plays a role in users’ experience with online science resources. Two-thirds of internet users say they have come upon news and information about science when they went online for another reason.

Fully 65% of internet users say they have come across science news and information when they had gone online with another purpose in mind.

Younger internet users, those with high-speed connections, and those with a lot of online experience are more likely to have encountered science information online:

• 70% of those with broadband at home have encountered science information when they went online for another reason.
• 71% of those under 30 have come upon science information when they went online for another reason.
• 74% of those who have been online for ten years or more have encountered science information when they went online for another reason.

Those who seek out science news or information on the internet are more likely than others to believe that scientific pursuits have a positive impact on society.

Among internet users who have gotten science news and information online:

• 48% strongly agree that to be a strong society, the United States needs to be competitive in science; 33% of remaining online users strongly agree with this.
• 43% strongly agree that scientific research is essential to improving the quality of human lives; 27% of remaining online users say this.
• 38% strongly agree that developments in science make society better; 27% of remaining online users strongly agree with this.
• 22% strongly agree that people need a good understanding of scientific concepts and principles to lead their daily lives; 15% of remaining online users say this.

Non-internet users were less likely to strongly agree with each of these propositions, and this is due mainly to the fact that non-internet users have lower levels of educational attainment than online users. Higher levels of education are linked to getting science news and information online as well as the likelihood that a respondent strongly agreed with the above statements. Still, even among well-educated respondents, those who used the internet to get science information were more likely to agree with the above propositions than well-educated respondents who did not use the internet for science information.

Internet users who have sought science information online are more likely to report that they have higher levels of understanding of science.

• 81% of those who have gotten science information online say they have a good idea of what it means to study something scientifically; 60% of remaining internet users say this.
• 78% of those who have gotten science information online describe themselves as “very” or “somewhat” informed about new scientific discoveries; 58% of remaining internet users says this.
• 69% of those who have gotten science information online say they have a “very good” or “good” understanding of science; 49% of remaining online users say this.

To be sure, other things are associated with whether someone says he or she has a good understanding of science. A college or graduate degree – especially for those who have taken some science courses – is correlated with higher self-reported levels of interest in and knowledge of science. At the same time, interest in science is also associated with people’s sense of what they know about science. Nonetheless, getting science information online is an independent factor in this dynamic: A college-educated person who gets science information online is more likely than a similar college graduate who doesn’t get science information online to report higher levels of interest in science in the three measures listed above.

Between 40% and 50% of internet users say they get information about a specific topic using the internet or through email.

Respondents in each topic area were asked whether, at some point, they had use the internet or email for news and information about the issue at hand. Here’s what they said:

• 38% of internet users who received questions about stem cell research said they had gotten information on the topic from the internet or through email.
• 49% of internet users who received questions about climate change said they had gotten information through the web or via email on climate change.
• 42% of internet users who answered questions about the origins of life said they had gotten information on the topic from the internet or through email.

Search engines are far and away the most popular source for beginning science research among users who say they would turn first to the internet to get more information about a specific topic.

Focusing only on respondents in each of the three topical modules who said the internet would be their first option if they needed to find out more about their topic, about 90% in each topic said they would use a search engine. Specifically:

• 87% of stem cell respondents who cited the internet as their first choice for finding out more about their topic said they would use a search engine.
• 93% of climate change respondents who cited the internet as their first choice for finding out more about their topic said they would use a search engine.
• 91% of origin of life respondents who cited the internet as their first choice for finding out more about their topic said they would use a search engine.

Half of all internet users have been to a website which specializes in scientific content.

When asked whether they had ever gone to websites where the content is predominantly about science, half (49%) of internet users said they had been to at least one of the following sites.

• 23% of internet users have been to NationalGeographic.com.
• 23% have been to USGS.gov, the main website of the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the main U.S. government site for Earth-science information.
• 19% have been to NASA.gov.
• 14% have been to the Smithsonian Institution website.
• 10% have been to Science.com.
• 9% have been to Nature.com.

Fully 59% of Americans have been to some sort of science museum in the past year.

• Nearly half (48%) of all Americans have been to a zoo or aquarium in the past year.
• 26% have been to a natural history museum.
• 23% have been to a science or technology museum.
• 14% have been to a planetarium.

When looking across all of these science-oriented entities, 59% of Americans have been to at least one of them in the past year. Excluding zoos or aquariums from this count, 40% of Americans in the past year went to a natural history museum, science or technology museum, or planetarium.

Science websites and science museums may serve effectively as portals to one another.

• Fully 79% of those who have gone to a website that specializes in science content have gone to a science museum in the past year; 59% of the general population have made such visits.
• For the internet users who have been to a science museum in the past year, 57% have been to a science website – 8 points above the average for all internet users.

The correlation between people going to science museums and science websites was the strongest across all the sources asked about, i.e., including TV shows and magazine. In other words, there was a much stronger link between visiting a science museum and a science website than between visiting a science website and watching science television programming. This suggests that online and offline science resources may play off of each other in a distinctive way that draws at least some users more deeply to resources that promote science knowledge.

About Us

About the Pew Internet/Exploratorium partnership: This survey was developed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Exploratorium, a science museum and science-education center in San Francisco, California.

With the support of a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)¹, the Exploratorium has undertaken a project designed to improve the public’s understanding of how scientists gather and interpret scientific evidence. As part of this effort, the Exploratorium commissioned the Pew Internet Project to develop and implement a national survey to determine how Americans get their science news and information. Funds for the survey reported in this document came from the Exploratorium through this NSF grant.

About the Pew Internet & American Life Project: The Pew Internet Project is a nonprofit, non-partisan think tank that explores the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care, and civic/political life.  The Project aims to be an authoritative source for timely information on the Internet’s growth and societal impact.  Support for the project is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The project’s Web site: www.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet.

The Exploratorium: Housed within the walls of San Francisco’s landmark Palace of Fine Arts, the Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception filled with hundreds of interactive, hands-on exhibits. In addition to serving more than half a million people who visit the museum each year, the Exploratorium is also a leader in the movement to promote museums as informal education centers, providing professional development for science teachers and teacher-educators, and operating as a research and development center for the science museum field at large. The Exploratorium’s award-winning Web site, online since 1993, currently receives more than 20 million unique visits a year. Through its many innovative exhibits and programs, the museum encourages people of all ages to explore the world around them. The Exploratorium’s Web site: www.exploratorium.edu.

Introduction

People’s attitudes about science, their level of scientific knowledge, and the attention they pay to scientific developments have long been a topic of interest in the scientific community and among policymakers. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has since the early 1980s tracked people’s attitudes toward and understanding of science in its bi-annual “Science & Engineering Indicators” series. The NSF’s most recent report on the topic – released in 2006 and based on a 2004 survey – finds that Americans are generally supportive of science, but often not well informed about scientific topics.⁴

The dominant media source for getting news and information about science has been – and remains – television. However, as the NSF pointed out in its 2004 survey, the internet makes a difference in how people get information about science. In 2004, respondents to the NSF survey said the internet was their preferred source of information when trying to find out about specific scientific issues – eclipsing encyclopedias or other research tools.

Even since 2004, there has been change in the world of cyberspace. In early 2004, 63% of Americans had access to the internet, a figure that grew to 73% in the beginning of 2006. The means of online access have changed more noticeably since 2004. Only 24% of Americans had “always on” high-speed internet connections at home in the early part of 2004. By March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed (or broadband) connections at home, a 75% increase.

This report seeks to sort through the mix of resources people use to get information about science, explore where the internet fits, and how it matters. The survey was commissioned as a component of Evidence: How Do We Know What We Know, an NSF-funded, Web-based project being designed by the Exploratorium to help users investigate the nature of scientific understanding. By providing examples and experiences based on current scientific investigations about topics of interest to a broad public, this online resource gives users the opportunity to explore their own processes of knowledge construction and compare it with the kinds of processes used by scientists.

As one of the first museums to bring resources to the public through the World Wide Web, the Exploratorium is interested in learning how people use the internet to engage with science. The Pew Internet Project’s extensive experience in understanding the role of the internet as an important informational and cultural resource in the United States makes it possible for this survey to address the issue.

Among the questions this report explores are:

• Where does the internet fit in how people learn about scientific issues relative to other resources people may use?
• Is there any connection between getting science information online and attitudes about science and scientific research?
• Does the internet play an evidentiary role for users, letting them check scientific facts, verify claims about science, or dig deeper into scientific controversies?

In the landscape of how people get science news and information, the television dominates, but the internet is the next most popular source.

All respondents to the Pew Internet/Exploratorium survey were asked where they have ever gotten news and information about science, and where they get most of their science news and information. As the table shows below, the internet is half as likely as television to be cited as a main source of science news, but it is the second most cited source across the range of media.

The figures above are consistent with those from the NSF’s 2004 survey which asked about people’s primary source of news about science and technology. In that survey, 41% cited TV, 18% the internet, 14% a magazine, 14% the newspaper, and 2% the radio.⁵

In the table above, the 54% of all Americans who have gotten science news and information on the internet translates into 74% of internet users having done this (because not everyone is an internet user). For the 20% of all Americans who get most of their science information from the internet, this translates into 27% of all online users.

The table below contrasts the demographic profiles of those who get most of their news and information about science from television and those who say the internet is their main source for this kind of information. People who turn to the internet most for science news and information are more likely to be young, well educated, and able and willing to make the monthly outlay for a high-speed internet connection. Those who rely on television tend to be older, less educated, and less likely to have a child under the age of 18.

People under age 30 are equally as likely to say they rely on the internet as television for most of their news about science.

Although TV the main source for science in the general population, the picture changes when focusing only on respondents under the age of 30. For that group, 36% say they get most of their science news and information from television, which is basically the same percentage – 34% – who say they rely on the internet for most of their science information. Here is how media use for science information sorts out when comparing age groups.

People use the internet extensively to learn about science – for research, homework, satisfying curiosity, and looking for evidence about scientific propositions.

Although about one quarter of all internet users say they get most of their science news and information from the internet, the vast majority – 87 % – of internet users have at one time turned to the internet to get some piece of information about science. Note the contrast between 87% and the 74% figure cited above as the share of internet users who ever have gotten online information. The difference arises this way: When respondents are prompted about specific online science activities, they remember things they have done with respect to science that they don’t when simply asked if they have ever gotten science information online. As the table below shows, online users are likely to use the internet almost like an encyclopedia – looking for meanings of specific scientific terms or looking for an answer to a specific question about science.

3 out of 5 (59%) internet users have used the internet for online queries connected to scientific evidence.

People also use the internet to search for evidence to help them sort out issues regarding science. Half (52%) have used the internet to check the accuracy of a scientific fact or statistic and 37% have used the internet to compare opposing or different scientific theories. This adds up to 59% of internet users who have done at least one of these two activities.

For those with high-speed internet connections at home, 91% have done at least one of these activities online.

As to specific online sites which provide science content, the table below shows the share of internet users who have ever been to the listed sites.

Close to two-thirds (62%) of internet users have been to at least one of those eight sites. Of the six sites that specialize mainly in science content (i.e., excluding PBS and Discovery), 49% of internet users have been to at least one of those sites. And a sizable share of the internet population – 27 % – has been to three or more of these eight sites at one point.

Part 3 of this report will analyze in greater detail the usage patterns for these sites and compare use of online science resources to offline ones, such as going to science museums, reading science magazines, and watching science TV programming.

Consumers of online science information are into fact-checking – sometimes using online resources but also using offline ones.

Those who have gotten science news or information online sometimes dig deeper into a piece of scientific information. Specifically:

• 62% say they look for other information online to check the reliability of information they have found to ensure it is correct.
• 54% say they check with an offline source, like a journal or encyclopedia, to assess reliability.
• 54% look up the original source of the information or the original study the information is based upon.

Fully 80% of those who have consulted science information online have done at least one of these three activities. Those who use the internet to check the reliability of information they have found online are also likely to use offline sources to further check the fact. Fully two-thirds (68%) of internet users who have checked into a science fact online also have checked with an offline source to assess its reliability.

For those in the 18-29 age group with high-speed connections at home, the reliance on the internet for fact-checking is pronounced. Fully 71% of those who have gotten science information online have turned to the internet to find out more about the reliability of scientific information; they are only slightly more likely than average to have checked with an offline source (57% have) or looked up the original source of information (56% have).

Convenience is a big driver of people to the internet for science information.

Respondents were asked what comes closest to describing why they use the internet for science news and information. Among online users who have gotten some news or information about science on the internet, 71% say they do so because getting science information online is easy and convenient. Just 13% say they turn to the internet because they believe online science information is more accurate than elsewhere and another 12% say it is because they can get science information online that they can’t get elsewhere. For home broadband users, 77% cite convenience as the reason they use the internet for science information and news.

When probed further about where they turn first when looking for science news and information, 61% of people who have gotten science information online identify the internet as their starting point; 69% of home broadband users say this.

Online users, by happenstance, run into science news and information when they log on for another purpose.

When asked if they come upon science news and information when they have gone online with another purpose in mind, 65% of internet users say they have encountered science information when they are online for something else. This phenomenon is more prevalent among the younger pool of internet users in the sample.

It is also the case that people who have more internet experience are more likely to run into science information online than others. Three quarters (74%) of internet users who have been online 10 or more years have come upon online information while online for another reasons compared to 61% of other online users.⁶ This is because online experience is associated with more extensive internet surfing habits.

A somewhat greater share of home broadband users (70%) says they have encountered science information when online for another reason. Online experience and connection speed tend to amplify one another a bit; 76% of those with broadband at home and ten or more years of online experience have come across science information in the course of an online session intended to do something else.