“Turning science into video” Scientific communication for and with vocational students – a pilot study

Dissemination, i.e., the communication of research results to a wider audience, is often not part of the research process, resulting in significant delays in implementing new scientific results in practice. Young adults are an especially difficult group to reach with traditional methods of research communication, i.e., scientific publications, conferences, or panel discussions. Hence, new formats are needed to engage young adults in a dialogue with scientists and research results. The goal of this study was threefold: (1) the involvement of the target group from the start of the research project to the end and to find a topic of interest to young adults; (2) to jointly define a video format to present this topic and scientific results related to it; and (3) to evaluate content and format of the video in groups of peers not involved in the project. A Focus Group was conducted with vocational students (i.e., adolescents and young adults) to define a scientific topic of interest and the exact dissemination format by means of participatory research. Qualitative analysis of the transcribed Focus Group was conducted using structured content analysis. Further, surveys before and after watching the video were conducted in classes of vocational students not involved in the Focus Group to assess their images of science, their interest in science, and their opinion on the format and content of the video. The Focus Group decided on the topic of stress related to school and education, and determined a group discussion with students, a professor in educational science, and a moderator from the research team. The video was well-received by peers, but almost half of participants would not watch another video like this. 21% of respondents state that the video has changed their understanding of science. The co-creation process used in this study has resulted in a topic of interest for the targeted audience. However, while watching the video changed perception and understanding of science in some recipients, they also questioned the added value with regard to learning something new. Research produces results that are relevant for society, but very often, these results are slow to reach the group who would need them. One important reason for this is that a large and growing number of people no longer consume traditional media outlets (such as newspapers or radio). This is especially true for adolescents and young adults. In this project, we set out to examine whether a co-creation research format could be helpful to communicate scientific results to adolescents and young adults attending vocational schools. Students were invited to choose both the topic of the research and the format of the research communication (e.g. video). To ensure relevance of the topic to the target group, we closely worked with vocational students to (1) find a topic of interest to them (2), determine the exact content of the video, and (3) evaluate how the video was received by their peers. Participants in our study decided that they were most interested in stress related to school, and that they would like to discuss their individual experiences with a scientific expert in this area. Hence, the video had the format of a group discussion. While the video was well-received by participants’ peers in school, most of them said they would not watch another video like that in the future, and that they did not want to share it on their Social Media accounts. Together, this indicates that while videos are an attractive format to communicate scientific results, the question remains how the transfer of knowledge among peers can be improved.