Difference between revisions of "Team:Bordeaux/Public Engagement"

Survey

Part of our Human Practice work, we have established a little survey under the form of a mini quiz. It aims to establish a state of knowledge regarding what people know about forest in general, and the resulting industry. We diffused the survey to all IGEM teams contacted by social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. As the objective was not to collect only igemers participation, we diffused the survey among our university classmates, friends and family. The survey was available under both English and French version. In that way we hoped to reach a maximum of people to establish a great overview of the results.

Survey structure

The quiz has 8 questions with 3 answers and only one is correct. At the end of these questions the participant must fill personal information fields in order to see who is participating. We asked for the age group, the country of residency and if the player is participating to the current IGEM competition or not. After sending his answers the player is assigned a mark on 8pts and he can consult a correction.

Questions theme

All questions refer to the concept of Forest in general and worldwide. Some were more oriented to how the forest are used, and how they are managed. They are listed below:

1. Approximately how much of the total forest represents the modified natural forests worldwide ?
2. Which country has the largest forested area ?
3. Which country generates the most industrial profit from its forests ?
4. What type of forest is the most represented in the world ?
5. How many people are employed in the forest trades ?
6. In Brazil, which activity is the most responsible in the reduction of forests ?
7. Which country is the leader in pulp and paper industry ?
8. Today, how are recycled sub-products from wood industry ?

Results

We collected a total of 125 answers. From these 127 participants, 60 are participating to the IGEM competition which represents 47.2%. The average mark is 2.33/8. The proportion of correct answers is visible on the histogram.

The low average mark score is indicating a lake of knowledge in most of the questions. However, it is not surprising to see such a fact as some of the questions were very specific. We can see that half of the answers from question 4 are correct. At the opposite, only 15.2% of the answers from question 6 are correct. The little score for the question 6 highlights a weakness concerning the main reason of the destruction of the biggest forest in the world; the Amazonian forest. It is surprising as we know since years now that the Amazon Rainforest is being hurt and reduced in superficies every year.

What is interesting for us is the result obtained for the final question. Only 30.4% of the answers are correct. Most of the participants do not know how are recycled sub-products from the wood industry. The correct answer is that sub-products from the wood industry are burnt to produce thermal energy. However, the answers indicate that most of them think these sub-products are not recycled at all.

Regarding our project it is interesting to see that people are not aware of how forests are managed. Hence, a large work of awareness, information and documentation needs to be done so people know the potential of forest to maximize the benefits they already give us.

Thanks to the personal information field, it is interesting to see from where all the participants come from. Most of them are from France. However, we collected answers from other European countries such as Germany, England Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. We also reached farer countries such as Canada, USA, Algeria, but even India and Japan.