About the 2021 Survey

For the fourth year, 3M is sharing unique insights from our original research project, the State of Science Index. The State of Science Index is a third-party, independent research study commissioned by 3M that tracks and explores global attitudes toward science, taking the pulse on how people think and feel about the field and its impact on the world around us. Last year, we released two waves of data at once: one which was fielded a few months before the pandemic hit in August-October 2019 (called 2020 Pre-Pandemic Survey), and a second full data set from a pulse survey conducted during the pandemic in July-August 2020 (called 2020 Pandemic Pulse). About six months later (February-March 2021) and one year into the epidemic, we fielded the 2021 survey to help us understand the longer-term impact that the pandemic and other major economic and social justice milestones have had on global views on science and top scientific issues.

Why are we conducting this research?
Science matters to 3M. We want to create a better world through science, and we want to inspire others to join us in that effort. To do so, we need to understand what the world thinks of science—and the role it plays in society—because it could impact the future. 3M’s State of Science Index presents original, independent and nationally representative (based on census demographics) research conducted among the general population around the world.

Since 2018, it has been one of the largest, most global studies to explore attitudes about science and enables 3M to track and benchmark shifts in attitudes about science over time, using the inaugural year as a baseline. This year, we expanded the survey even further—expanding from 14 countries to 17 countries. We have enough historical data to call out trends from questions we have tracked over time. Data from this research can be viewed as a global average, or individually by country.

Methodology

3M’s State of Science Index presents original, independent and nationally representative (based on census demographics) research in 2021.

The 2021 State of Science Index survey was conducted among a representative sample of 1,000 general population adults, 18 years and older, across the following 17 countries: US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, China, India, UAE, and Australia. At the 95% confidence level, the margin of error is +/- 0.75 percentage points at the 17-country level and +/- 3.1 percentage points for each individual country.

To compare results year over year, a 10-country tracking average was used which has a margin of error of +/- 0.98 percentage points.

Previous survey findings