Exploring attitudes to societal relevance: the effects of reflection on research practices among Swedish environmental scientists^*

* The research was conducted at Linnaeus University, Sweden.

ABSTRACT

Funding agencies and policy-makers have put increasing pressure on scientists to better clarify the usefulness of their research. It has been suggested that this may have led to an increased reflection on the societal relevance of research among the scientists themselves. However, this often is more an assumption than a carefully verified fact. This paper investigates whether reflection on societal relevance actually occurs and has a measurable effect on the choice of research and on dissemination activities performed by scientists. A survey was conducted among researchers in environmental science and technology at Swedish universities. Results show that researchers do frequently reflect upon the societal and environmental relevance of their work. We used path modelling techniques to assess how this influences their professional activities. Results show that reflection was important to explain both the choice of research and dissemination activities. Variables such as individual attitudes, experience and collaboration with external actors also affected these outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Mode 2
• relevance of research
• choice of research
• environmental science
• reflection

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants in the LNU sociology seminar for their input. Further, we would like to thank Yahya Jani and Flaminio Squazzoni for valuable comments on the paper. Lastly, we extend our gratitude to Michelle Wille for proofreading the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Joacim Rosenlund is a senior lecturer at Linnaeus University and has a PhD in environmental science. Previous and current research concerns cross-sector collaboration in environmental science. He has a background in sociology from Lund and Gothenburg universities.

Peter Notini worked as a project assistant in the environmental science and engineering group at Linnaeus University. He has a background in both sociology and psychology.

Giangiacomo Bravo is a sociology professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His main interests include environmental and computational social sciences. He has published in high-ranked disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals and has participated in international research projects.

ORCID

Giangiacomo Bravo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2837-0137

Notes

* The research was conducted at Linnaeus University, Sweden.