Table 1.
Skills STEM graduate students report being needed to communicate science.
Table 2.
Intended audiences STEM graduate students expect to engage with.
Table 3.
Mediums through which STEM graduate students envision science communication.
As described in the methods section, responses corresponding to more than one code were coded to each code they correspond with within the same question.
Table 4.
The purpose of science communication as perceived by STEM graduate students.
Table 5.
Participant responses to the question “what has stopped you from engaging in science communication related to a general science concept?” the resulting codes are shown in the left hand column, with a description of each code in the center column, and example responses from participants in the right hand column.
Text from each response that is directly relevant to each code is in bold and underlined text.
Table 6.
Participant responses to the question “what has stopped you from communicating your own thesis research to a non-scientific general audience?” the resulting codes are shown in the left hand column, with a description of each code in the center column, and example responses from participants in the right hand column.
Text from each response that is directly relevant to each code is in bold and underlined text.
Fig 1.
A full list of represented institutions can found in S1 File (S1 Table).
A. Participants time completed in graduate school, in years, shown as percent responding. B. Participants subject-specific disciplines binned based on their branch of science following an existing organizational chart (https://www.mindmeister.com/1023614692/branches-of-science?fullscreen=1).
Fig 2.
Word clouds highlight the complexity of participant definitions of science communication.
The size of each of the words within the categorical word clouds correlates to its frequency in the coded responses. The words “science,” “scientific,” “communication,” and “communicating” have been removed in order to showcase more representative words.
Fig 3.
Participants report on whether their institution offers formal science communication training.
Participant responses to the question “Did you have formal science communication training, for a public audience, at your graduate institution?” Data is shown as percent responding, with 72% responding no and 28% responding yes.
Fig 4.
Participants previous training in specific science communication skills.
Participant responses when asked where, if at all, they received training in 11 core skills in science communication, listed A-K [33]. Data are shown as percent responding.
Fig 5.
What do participants consider to be science communication? participants were asked “which of the following do you consider to fall within the category of science communication?” and directed to select all that apply.
Data is shown as percent responding.
Table 7.
Differences in audience types and qualitative responses between communicating general science concepts or thesis research as described by participants.
Table 8.
For participants who have communicated their thesis to the general public we asked: “what skills did you need?” the resulting codes are shown in the left hand column, with a description of each code in the center column, and example responses from participants in the right hand column.
Text from each response that is directly relevant to each code is in bold and underlined text.
Table 9.
We asked all participants “what additional training do you need to communicate your thesis research?” the resulting codes are shown in the left hand column, with a description of each code in the center column, and example responses from participants in the right hand column.
Text from each response that is directly relevant to each code is in bold and underlined text.
Fig 6.
Participant performance/competence and interest and in science communication.
Further statistical tests were done to examine relationships between interest and competence/performance in science communication, gender, and previous teaching experience. Bars with asterisks and hashtags indicate a statistically significant difference between two groups, gender and teaching experience, respectively. A corresponding data chart is found in S1 File (S3 Table).