Shedding light on the public’s views of the humanities

To have a clearly described societal benefit is said to be an important factor for people to be able to have confidence in research. But it seems that this matters less and may even have the opposite effect. This is one of the findings of a new study undertaken by the Swedish non-profit association VA (Public & Science) investigating the Swedish public’s views of humanities research.

The study has been carried out with funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The survey was conducted with the help of the market research company Ipsos and participants were invited from their randomly recruited web panel. In the first survey, 1,024 people participated (participation rate 33 percent) and in the second 2,016 people (participation rate 31 percent).

The whole report (in Swedish only) is available to download here.