Wellcome Trust Monitor 1

The Wellcome Trust Monitor is a unique survey of UK adults' and young people's views of medical research and seeks to develop a more systematic approach to describing and understanding trends in public interest in, knowledge of and attitudes towards medical research and its associated advances and applications.

The survey collected data across a wide range of areas and issues in order to provide a broad baseline of measures for the future. The Wellcome Trust Monitor will be repeated every three years in order to contribute to and build over time a robust, high-quality evidence base to allow for the collection of data to explore trends and variations across time on both general themes and specific issues.

As well as incorporating the questions about medical research as administered to the adult sample, the Monitor will also track changes in young people's (14-18 years) attitudes to school science education, and perceptions of careers in science more generally.

The survey was conducted on behalf of the Wellcome Trust by NatCen. Interviews were conducted in 2009 with 1179 adults aged 18+ and 374 young people aged 14-18. All interviews were conducted in respondents' homes and lasted 45 minutes. A random stratified sampling approach was used.

A short summary of findings of particular interest for the Wellcome Trust has also been produced.

Download Monitor 1 report [PDF 1.27MB]

Download Monitor 1 key points [PDF 192KB]