Bridge the Gap Between the Academics and Real Social Applications
Social Research on the Energy Issue
As previously addressed, the importance and urgency to seek a feasible solution to the energy issue is undebatable. The energy issue is neither just a regional nor national problem, but instead a global one. In response to the urgent need, vast efforts and time have already been devoted to those relevant studies, however, only few of which is really able to be put into real applications. Actually, the biggest obscure restraining the feasible solution to alleviate the energy stress is mainly due to the huge gap between the research results and the massive industrialization. In another word, not only should we emphasize the technological advancements, but also we ought to raise the strong awareness to integrate the scientific results into real industrial application to yield concrete social values.
To better understand the energy issue from a border aspect, our team carried out a social research discovering the gap between the academic research and the real industrial application, especially in the context of the energy issue. The main objectives of this social research aim at socially figuring out the developing background of the energy issue as well as getting prepared for the further industrialization of our project. We want to hear from different opinions from various aspects, including the public, the academic, the industrial, and also the authority. Only when concerns from all these parties are understood, could we fully comprehend the issue in real social context, and then figure out a series of feasible solutions to profoundly contribute to our society.
Our social research started as early as we just decided to work on the energy issue. We built up a long-term real-time interaction with the society, instead of a simple short glimpse, for the comprehensively understanding on the issue requires continuous communications and thoughts exchanging. Generally speaking, this social research consisted of two main parts, the public questionnaire and interviews. A public questionnaire was implemented to be familiar to the general public attitudes. We carefully analyzed the data collected. And according to the main concerns and opinions we found through the data analysis, we invited several experts from different walk of to participate in a series of theme interviews. Our interviewees included scientists working at the cutting-edge in the field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as from the administrative government. With their generous engagements, our team was able to further explore the project in a social context.
Click here to know more about our social research.
Questionnaire
A questionnaire on the energy issue was designed and then distributed through the internet. All 37 questions were asked, and here, we performed the core analysis of the questionnaire. We have finally in all collected 231 samples, 15 of which were canceled as invalid samples due to their short answering time (less than 180 seconds). The rest of 216 samples were regarded as valid responds that qualified for further analysis.
Interview
To deeply understand the energy issue from various aspects as well as further development of our system in the social context, our team conducted a series of interviews with experts from all walks of life. Besides the general voices heard from the public, we discovered the opinions from the relevant industrial communit, the academic researchers and the administrative authority.
Our interviewers include the following.
Professor Qixi Mi from School of physical science and technology at ShanghaiTech University;
Mr. Yujun Lan from Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA);
Ms. Chen from Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA);
Ms. Yu Huang from Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD;
Mr. Shengbo Chen from Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD;
Click here to find further information about interviews.
