• About this study
• Our findings

Wellcome Trust Monitor

About this study

The Wellcome Trust Monitor is a survey series that tracks the public's attitudes to and understanding of medical research over time. It's also being used to find out what young people aged between 14 and 18 think about science education and science careers. Each survey in the series will explore a specific topic in depth, in the first year of the survey we looked at public attitudes to genetic testing.

The survey was first conducted in 2009 and will be repeated every three years.

You can read the pdf report for 2009 here and topline findings from the report here. More information is also available on the Wellcome Trust's website.

Potential policy impact

The Wellcome Trust is the UK's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research. The charity will use the results of this survey to inform its future policy making and funding decisions in the areas of medical research and science education.

Methods

We selected a group of adults aged 18 and over by randomly sampling addresses from the UK's Postcode Address File. Young people aged 14-18 were interviewed in the households of adult respondents and at neighbouring addresses using a technique called focussed enumeration.

In 2009 we interviewed 1,179 adults aged 18 and over and 374 young people. These interviews were conducting using CAPI, with some questions being shared and others being asked only of the adults or young people.

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