Miller, Jon D. <br/><br/>
American people and science policy: the role of public attitudes in the policy process 

 - New York  Oxford  1983 
 - 143 p. 
<br/><br/> The conclusions of the study are based particularly on four major surveys<br/>administered by Jon Miller's team: two of the general public (administered in<br/>1979 and 1981), one of high school and college students (1978), and one of the<br/>leadership of the science and technology community (1981). The study estab-<br/>lishes the size of the attentive public for science, its growth over time, its social<br/>composition, the recruitment and socialization of science attentives in the high<br/>school and college years, the areas of agreement and disagreement of the atten-<br/>tive public and the science leadership on policy questions, and finally the sig-<br/>nificance of these properties of the attentive public for science policy and for<br/>democratic politics.<br/>Miller's main argument is that the attentive public for science is a substan-<br/>tial and growing stratum of the population (20% as of 1981), interested and<br/>informed about science, which is mobilizable in support of scientific and tech-<br/>nological growth. In a sense it is a “reserve army” for the political support of<br/>science, since its high prestige in the last decades has made it possible for<br/>research and development to get an increasing share of public resources without<br/>much political controversy. But given the declining rate of economic growth in<br/>recent years, the leadership of science in its struggles for its share of public<br/>resources may have increasing need for this motivated, informed, and politically<br/>sophisticated mass of supporters. 
<br/><br/><label>ISBN: </label>0080280641 
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Topical Terms: </label><br/>Science and state united states citizen participation
<br/><br/><label>Dewey Class. No.: </label>306.450973 MIL