Surveying Kuwaiti Worldviews to Promote Science Culture in Kuwait

Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre 800x600 — Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre, Kuwait / @Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre

This project will investigate the relationship between generalised worldviews and perspectives on a culture of science in Kuwait. The overarching aim of this study is to identify worldviews that are receptive and conducive to a science culture and to promote a culture of science by designing communication strategies that both resonate with receptive worldviews and that appeal to the individual’s own generalised mental framework.

Literature has identified five generalised worldviews, namely the ‘Reward’ mindset, the ‘Community’ mindset, the ‘Civic’ mindset, the ‘Strategic’ mindset, and the ‘Survivor’ mindset (Sammut, 2019). This project aims to investigate the relationship between these five worldviews and science culture in two ways. Firstly, we intend to analyse a corpus of policy briefs, press releases and other relevant policy documents issued by Kuwaiti authorities to determine the discursive flavour of these public documents. Secondly, we intend to undertake a national survey in Kuwait to measure the relative distribution of the generalised worldviews, attitudes towards a culture of science, and perceptions of the policy instruments investigated in the first study.

The result of this analysis will enable us to understand which policy instruments resonated most strongly with the general public in terms of the discursive features these promoted. The results will also help us understand which generalised worldviews are more conducive to a culture of science. The broad aspiration of these studies is to (a) identify which worldview/s support a culture of science, (b) which communicative strategies exercise most impact by resonating with particular worldviews, and (c) which discursive features are overlooked in promoting a culture of science. Together, these findings will help policy makers design their communication briefs in ways that resonate with the public in an effort to improve policy uptake.