Team:Northwestern/Outreach
Outreach and public engagement
Local Survey
Background on our respondents:
Out of the 68 people that were surveyed, 52.9% were 18-20, while the next most common age group was 21-29 with 29.4%. The gender balance of our respondents was 52.9% male and 47.1% female. Additionally, over 60% of respondents are not Evanston residents; however, 25 people surveyed (36.7%) live in Chicago.
The pie chart below shows the varying levels of education among respondents:
Figure 1: Responses to Education Level
Based on the responses, a vast majority (60 out of 68) identified water pollution as a moderate to serious problem on a national level. However, only 41 thought it was a moderate to serious problem on a local level. This data is logical as 55 respondents stated that their knowledge of the U.S. Steel chromium spill into Lake Michigan was “very poor” or “poor”. In addition, 88.2% of those surveyed had never tested their water for contaminants. Through this, we learned that we not only needed to develop a sensor to make testing water more accessible and easy, but that we also needed to educate the public on the prevalence of water contamination in their neighborhood.
Figure 2: Responses to Local and National Knowledge
After the results from the survey came in, we resolved that we needed to have a paper-based sensor that had an immediate colorimetric output (as per suggestion from Professor Jewett as well). 46 respondents said that they favored a paper-based system and 30 said it would be concerning to send the sample into a lab. This coincides with the idea that people will not use a product that is an inconvenience to them, especially if they do not know exactly how it works or where its going, as most of the general public would not.
Figure 3: Responses to Willingness to Using Paper-based Assay
In terms of distribution, an overwhelming majority, 82.4%, thought the best way to get our system into citizen’s hands was through mail; thus we deduced that in future developments, we would partner with a distributor to ship them out.
Survey Limitations
It should be noted that the survey was self-selected and was distributed through the Facebook profiles of this years team and through a synthetic biology email list. Although we realize that these results are potentially skewed, we wanted to get feedback from those in industry, by the emailing list, as well as the general Northwestern community, through Facebook.
Presentation at GeneMods
As mentioned before, one issue that we needed to address was the lack of knowledge and awareness about the contamination in Lake Michigan. Our team was able to coordinate with GeneMods, a synthetic biology group of undergraduates, graduate students, and post-docs at Northwestern University. In our presentation to peers and experts alike, we explained the chromium dump in Lake Michigan and the negative effects of such contamination. We then introduced MetaSense and the possibility for it to empower citizens to test their water supply for contaminants. This experience was more than just educating others; we were able to also get expert opinions on our sensor and educate the synthetic biology community at Northwestern about the cell-free area of the discipline.
**For a more detailed list of responses, please follow the link to our Google Form responses.