Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland.
PLoS One. 2012;7(4):e34505. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034505. Epub 2012 Apr 4.
Recent years have seen increasing encouragement by research institutions and funding bodies for scientists to actively engage with the public, who ultimately finance their work. Animal behaviour as a discipline possesses several features, including its inherent accessibility and appeal to the public, that may help it occupy a particularly successful niche within these developments. It has also established a repertoire of quantitative behavioural methodologies that can be used to document the public's responses to engagement initiatives. This kind of assessment is becoming increasingly important considering the enormous effort now being put into public engagement projects, whose effects are more often assumed than demonstrated. Here we report our first attempts to quantify relevant aspects of the behaviour of a sample of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who pass through the 'Living Links to Human Evolution Research Centre' in Edinburgh Zoo. This University research centre actively encourages the public to view ongoing primate research and associated science engagement activities. Focal follows of visitors and scan sampling showed substantial 'dwell times' in the Centre by common zoo standards and the addition of new engagement elements in a second year was accompanied by significantly increased overall dwell times, tripling for the most committed two thirds of visitors. Larger groups of visitors were found to spend more time in the Centre than smaller ones. Viewing live, active science was the most effective activity, shown to be enhanced by novel presentations of carefully constructed explanatory materials. The findings emphasise the importance and potential of zoos as public engagement centres for the biological sciences.
近年来，研究机构和资助机构越来越鼓励科学家积极与公众互动，因为公众最终为他们的工作提供资金。动物行为学作为一门学科具有一些特点，包括其固有的可接近性和对公众的吸引力，这可能有助于它在这些发展中占据一个特别成功的位置。它还建立了一系列定量行为方法，可以用来记录公众对参与计划的反应。考虑到现在正在投入大量精力进行公众参与项目，而这些项目的效果往往是假设的而不是证明的，这种评估变得越来越重要。在这里，我们报告了我们首次尝试量化通过爱丁堡动物园“人类进化研究中心活体链接”的数十万参观者样本中的一些相关行为的尝试。该大学研究中心积极鼓励公众观看正在进行的灵长类动物研究和相关的科学参与活动。对游客的焦点跟随和扫描抽样显示，根据常见的动物园标准，该中心的“逗留时间”相当长，第二年增加了新的参与元素，随之而来的是整体逗留时间显著增加，最投入的三分之二的游客逗留时间增加了两倍。发现较大的游客群体比较小的游客群体在中心停留的时间更长。观看现场、活跃的科学是最有效的活动，通过新颖的精心制作的解释材料展示可以增强这种效果。这些发现强调了动物园作为生物科学公众参与中心的重要性和潜力。
