Abstract
For the last two decades, the paradigm of scientific literacy has been rendered as "Engagement of the Public in Science and Technology." However, major scientific literacy surveys made so far have been unable to grasp this engagement to the fullest extent. This is due to the fact that it is impossible to evaluate how people of various characteristics engage in the particular group to which they belong (meso-level group) through a national level survey. On the other hand, it is not possible to analyze the public's literacy if we observe only the engagement of the people who participate in meso-level activities. In this paper, therefore, we propose a model for clarifying the structures among various factors that constitute scientific literacy and dividing the literacy into four types by clustering the responses in a national questionnaire survey. Introducing a case of people's interactions in a literacy improvement program, which is one of the abovementioned types, we will show a reality of the meso-level where various kinds of people iterate mutual interactions to form literacy as a group. The purpose of this research is to understand scientific literacy from the viewpoint of public engagement in society by integrating a macro-level quantitative survey with a meso-level case study.
