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. For the first time since conducting the State of Science Index, 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.
3M’s State of Science Index presents two waves of original, independent and nationally representative (based on census demographics) research in 2020.
Pre-Pandemic Wave: The 2020 Pre-Pandemic Survey was conducted in 14 countries among 1,000 general population adults (18+) in each of the following countries: Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, UK and the US. At the 95% confidence level, the margin of error is +/- 0.83 percentage points at the global, 14-country level and +/- 3.1 percentage points for each individual country.
Pandemic Pulse Wave: The 2020 Pandemic Pulse was conducted among 1,000 general population adults (18+) in 11 of the 14 countries from the 2020 Pre-Pandemic Survey. Countries excluded from this pulse include India, Mexico, and South Africa. At the 95% confidence level, the margin of error is +/- 0.94 points at the 11-country level and +/- 3.1 percentage points for each individual country.
To compare results year over year, a 9-country tracking average was used which has a margin of error of +/- 1.04 percentage points.
Survey insights
3M State of Science Index 2020 global report