In May 2013 the Australian Academy of Science conducted an online survey[1] and these are some of its findings:
30% of Australians think that it takes one day for the Earth to orbit the sun.
27% of Australians think that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs and 21% of university graduates think humans lived with dinosaurs.
6% of Australians think 81-100% of the earth’s surface is covered by water, with 7% of this group having a university education.
25% of Australians are not sure of the percentage of the Earth’s water that is fresh.
9% of Australians don’t believe in evolution and 10% don’t think it is currently occurring.
9% of Australians do not think humans are influencing the evolution of other species and 19% of university graduates do not think humans are influencing the evolution of other species.
79% of Australians say science education is absolutely essential or very important to the Australian economy.
[1] The survey was undertaken online and conducted between the 7th and 10th of May, 2013. Respondents were drawn from a professional social and market research panel.
The overall sample size was 1515, segmented and weighted to be nationally representative of Australia’s population by gender, age and residential location.
The accuracy of the results at an overall level is +/-2.5% at the 95% confidence interval. This means, for example, that if the survey returns a result of 50% to a particular question, there is 95% probability that the actual result will be between 47.5% and 52.5%.
Full survey results here.
No comments:
Post a Comment