Inland adult and child interest in the ocean

ABSTRACT

Interest is an important precursor to engaging the public in environmental and science learning. We used focus groups to explore ocean learning interests of inland residents of a coastal U.S. state, reasons for those interests, and differences between adults and children. We found adults and children generally had similar interests including categories like physical phenomena, sea life, and human impact on and from the ocean which could be a starting point for designers to gather specific local interests and context. Reasons for interest included knowledge for future decision-making which could be leveraged to encourage behavior change for ocean conservation and stewardship.

KEYWORDS:

• Ocean literacy
• participatory design
• museum exhibits
• public engagement with science

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Alachua Public Library system for hosting our focus groups, and the Florida Museum of Natural History for space to recruit participants. We also thank our anonymous reviewers and editors for their feedback on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study will be made openly available in 2021 at The Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/C52NU

Notes

1 Codes identify speaker, focus group location, focus group number designated by a random 3-digit number, and type (child or adult). For example S2, AL475C is Speaker 2, from Child focus group number 475 held at an Anonymous Library location.

2 This participant did not specifically tie ocean acidification to human activity themselves, but due to scientific consensus linking increased ocean acidification to warming oceans based on human activity, we characterized it that way here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant number 1612485.