Team:Oxford/Questionnaires
Surveys
Introduction
Engaging with the public was a key part of our project in order to ensure that the our end product was something that would be of benefit and acceptable to the people who would need to use this. In order to do this we carried out surveys with members of the public at strategic points to guide the project in the best direction. Each survey had a different aim to ensure that we were not doing surveys unnecessarily and to direct the project once we got out the results.
First Survey
We carried out our first survey before Christmas to investigate the issues people would like to be addressed by an interdisciplinary science project so that we would know what area would be most beneficial for us to do our project in.
Do you think that synthetic biology can contribute towards the solution of serious global challenges?
100% of out respondents thought that synthetic biology could contribute to serious global challenges which reassured us that the outcome of our own synthetic biology project should be useful, and that this is an area of science that the public have faith in.
What area would you like a project of this sort to focus on?
We found that the majority of people questioned favoured medical treatments as their preferred area of research. This question was a free answer although the question prompted some answers: "For example: diagnostics, energy, environment, food and nutrition, information processing, manufacturing, therapeutics etc." This may have had an impact on what people chose, but out of the different iGEM tracts available medical and therapeutic purposes were the most preferable.
What specific problem would you like to have solved by an interdisciplinary, synthetic biology-based project?
This again was a free answer question which was unprompted, and gave us answers such as Malaria, treatment of the common cold and asthma treatment. These were all quite vague and not really feasible for us to solve in one summer, but one person suggested probiotic supplements which got us thinking about bacteria as a treatment for diseases in general.
Results
This survey was designed as a brief guide to give us some idea as to the direction our project should take. Based on this we decided to investigate the use of bacteria as a medical treatment.
Second Survey
In this survey we aimed to investigate the public’s awareness of scientific issues that arise from our project to establish the areas we need to focus on in our outreach activities, assess the level of support our project might have if it were to be used as a treatment in the future and get an initial idea of whether people would prefer a single treatment or daily pill.
How old are you?
We found that we had an uneven spread of age groups with a heavy bias towards under 21s among our respondents. this is probably because the survey was shared via Facebook which lots of younger users, particularly among our friends who we got to fill it in. Also a lot of our friends under 21 are those doing biology related degrees at university with us so they may not be representative of their age group as a whole, their knowledge levels may be higher about the relevant issues than other people of the same age. This difference in age may impact on results as different age groups learn different things at school according to age and people’s opinions on medical treatments may vary with age. We decided to split results into under 21 and over 21 as the older groups are much smaller so there is little point in distinguishing between them.
Had you heard of genetic engineering before this survey?
We found that 90% people have heard of genetic engineering so don’t need to focus too much on public awareness of this in our outreach activities. Awareness was greater among younger people than older people so if anything we should be focusing on people over 21 but 90% overall means we probably don’t need to do this.
Had you heard of synthetic biology before this questionnaire?
Only a small majority overall have heard of synthetic biology so it’s worth doing some outreach projects to make people more aware of synthetic biology so they can be more engaged in our project. Again a majority of older people have not heard of synthetic biology so ideally it this is where we would be focussing our efforts.
Have you heard of Orphan Diseases (e.g. Wilson’s Disease?)
Our results showed that Orphan diseases need greater awareness as they are underfunded and most people haven’t heard of them. This means patients are less likely to get a diagnosis if awareness low amongst doctors as well but survey doesn’t specifically say this – raising awareness would help this too.
If your doctor recommended the use of genetically engineered bacteria to treat an illness, would you use it?
Already a majority of people would use it and a third of people don’t know – if they were given more information about it they might be persuaded to take it so we should aim to do this as we work on our project. Is this due to the doctors recommending them or people themselves making the decision for them? Need to ensure doctors would be onside too – communication with doctors required? We found that a larger proportion of younger people prepared to take it and a greater number of these people had heard of genetic engineering suggesting this is linked to knowledge levels. This suggests that by raising awareness a greater number of people will be prepared to take our treatment.
If you were given the option between taking a daily pill for an extended period of time, or a single probiotic bacterial pill to treat an illness, which would you choose?
m A single pill is preferable to a daily pill for the majority of respondents. Our results show that most people would follow their doctor’s recommendation – this suggests in previous question that many of the responses saying they would take it is down to the doctor suggesting it rather than it being their own choice. We could do another survey to clarify this without enabling them to get the doctor to choose for them, obviously they’d want to pick the recommended option but at this stage we want to know people’s preferences so we can target our project accordingly. This highlights how important it is to win over doctors not just patients as their input would be required to make our project work, so if we can we should discuss this with doctors to get their opinions and work out what we would have to do to convince them it is safe.
Results
In conclusion, the majority of people have heard of genetic engineering and synthetic biology. If we were to raise awareness of these issues then we should focus on older people rather than younger people, although there is benefit in talking to as many people as possible. Most people have not heard of orphan diseases so raising awareness of these should be a priority and we should try to do this. People will follow what their doctors recommended so we should ensure that doctors will recommend our treatments, not just focus on patients. And we should do another survey to clarify whether a single or daily dose is preferable, and maybe remove the doctor part as this might be changing people’s responses.
Third Survey
Intro to 3rd survey.
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Results
Results
Fourth Survey
Intro to 4th survey.
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