Welcome to our integrated human practice webpage! In this section, we will provide and analyze the data collected from our questionnaires and interviews. A total of 429 subjects completed our questionnaire. We believe that these data had provided a strong understructure for the direction of research and social acceptance. Acknowledgements:
We thank 问卷星 for providing the guidelines of this digital questionnaire. Our questionnaire consisted of 17 multiple choice questions. We divided our questionnaire to three sections. The first section is about the sample’s personal information, including 3 questions. These information were intended to help us analyze our results. For all questions in this section, there was one choice that is “confidential.” Through this method, we hope to protect the privacies of our samples as much as possible. The second section is about recycled paper, including 10 questions. The third section is about synthetic biology, including 4 questions. We made clear of our purpose at the start of the questionnaire in the picture following:
Section 1:
Question 1:
This question explored the gender of research sample. We wanted to understand which gender of population is more interested in our field of research and is willing to complete this questionnaire. We suspected a higher percentage of the sample to be women because previous research done by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) revealed that women are more likely to pay attention and take part in environmental actions. We believe that our data supported this point as it is shown that men only consisted 41% of total gender reveled population. This piece of evidence may suggest that our later questions that has is related to environmental problems will be reflected in a more positive way. Meaning that our data in terms of gender will be slightly different from the average population.
Question 2:
This question focused on the age group of research. Our sample were under the age of 60 for 99% of sample. In the 60-year-old range, there were two extremes of below 18 and above 60. The age group below 18 could be explained by friends and classmates of us. This group of people will be exposed to the future advances of technology and are more related to the recycled paper. The age group over 60 had a high percentage could e explained by the fact that they simply have more free time to do such questionnaires. The middle age group’s low participate rate could be explained for that they have to spend more time on their work and field of study and often spend less time doing questionnaires.
Question 3:
The last question was designated to see the sample’s level of education. This was an extension from the previous section. We see a small different between the number of samples’ education level to high school and below and age of below 18. The other portion of education level were are graduated or master’s degree and higher. This means that our samples were all highly educated. We suspect this to be that the more educated population are going to understand our questionnaire in a more comprehensive way. At the same time, most of the people we know are educated like us. Here, we are not stressing that the less educated population do not care about environmental issues, they have their own ways of saving the world, but they do not have the ability to understand many things we are trying to do; Therefore, we have later developed an education section for our human practice to teach others about our project.
Section 2:
Question 4:
This question is about the frequency of people recycling paper in speciality. In this question, 49 of 429 people selected the option of “Almost every time”, they takes the proportion of 11.42%; 110 of 429 people selected the option of “Often”, they takes the proportion of 25.64%; 208 of 429 people selected the option of “Seldom”, they takes the proportion of 48.48%; And 62 of 429 people selected the option of “Never considered”, they takes the proportion of 14.45%. The result can be indicated that about half of the interviewees have the habit of collecting and recycling paper in their daily life, but the proportion of the interviewees still need to improve in order to protect the environmental health.
Question 5:
This question is about people’s opinion of the meaning of recycling paper affects on the environmental protection. In this question, 389 of 429 people selected the option of “Necessary”, they takes the proportion of 90.68%; 29 of 429 people selected the option of “Meaningful but not necessary”, they takes the proportion of 6.76%; 7 of 429 people selected the option of “Less meaningful”, they takes the proportion of 1.63%; And 4 of 429 people selected the option of “Meaningless”, they takes the proportion of 0.93%. This question can be interpreted that almost all interviewees have the consciousness of the benefit of paper recycling and think it’s important to recycle paper to protect the environment.
Question 6:
This question is about the condition of people’s perceptions of recycled paper. In this question, 17 of 429 people selected the option of “Have deep perception, once especially made or researched”, they takes the proportion of 3.96%; 204 of 429 people selected the option of “Have some perception”, they takes the proportion of 47.55%; 184 of 429 people selected the option of “Have little perception”, they takes the proportion of 42.89%; And 24 of 429 people selected the option of “No perception”, they takes the proportion of 5.59%. From this question, we can see that the public don’t have really comprehensive or professional understandings about the recycled paper, so there are some biases of their attitude toward the function and effect of recycled paper. It also shows the importance to propagandize the recycled paper.
Question 7:
This question is about the ways for people to know the recycled paper, and this question only opened to the interviewees who didn’t select the option “No perception” in the Question 6. In this question, 234 of 405 people selected the option of “The propaganda from government or commonweal organizations”, they takes the proportion of 57.78%; 85 of 405 people selected the option of “Monetization website promotion”, they takes the proportion of 20.99%; 144 of 405 people selected the option of “School propagation”, they takes the proportion of 35.56%; 96 of 405 people selected the option of “Other people’s introduction”, they takes the proportion of 23.7%; And 42 of 405 people selected the option of “Others”, they takes the proportion of 10.37%. From this question, we can indicate that the most of public perceptions are from official social propagation.
Question 8:
This question is about people’s attitude about the meaning of easing over-cutting of trees by promote recycled paper, and this question only opened to the interviewees who didn’t select the option “No perception” in the Question 6. In this question, 234 of 405 people chose the option of “Necessary, and it can largely improve this issue”, it takes the proportion of 57.78%; 157 of 405 people chose the option of “Meaningful but not necessary”, it takes the proportion of 38.77%; And 13 of 405 people chose the option of “Less meaning, it won’t bring the effective improvement”, it takes the proportion of 3.46%; And 0 interviewee chose the option of “meaningless”in this question. From this question, we can see that the public holistically consider that the promotion of recycled paper has some meanings and effects on solving the over-cutting issue.
Question 9:
This question is about people’s attitude on some main disadvantages of recycled paper, and four options are listed: “Rough texture and poor writing experience””Thin and crisp paper, which is not conducive to preservation””The paper color is yellowish and is not suitable for writing”and “The process is complex and the cost is high”, and this question only opened to the interviewees who didn’t select the option “No perception” in the Question 6. The support rates of four disadvantages are all below 25%, but the opponent rate of the option ”The paper color is yellowish and is not suitable for writing”(170 of 405/41.98%) is obviously higher than other’s opponent rates. From this question we can see that the public generally not considered that recycled paper has obvious disadvantages, especially that it is not suitable for reading.
Question 10:
This question surveyed people’s attitudes toward the advantages of recycled paper, and this question only opened to the interviewees who didn’t select the option “No perception” in the Question 6. Four advantages are listed: Save the forest resources, Produce with low pollution, Low cost, Color is eye-protected. Obviously, Save the forest resources and Produce with low pollution received the over-half support rates, they are 93.83% and 64.94% respectively. It shows people’s general perception on the advantages of recycled paper.
Question 11:
This question is about what fields that interviewees would like to use recycled paper, and this question only opened to the interviewees who didn’t select the option “No perception” in the Question 6. The printed paper, newspaper and draft paper received the over-half support rates, they are 56.05%, 76.54% and 90.12% respectively. The public show the favourite of recycled paper on the draft paper field.
Question 12:
This question requires the interviewees to select three main factors that would influence their propensities when they are choosing different paper. Three factors received the over-half support rates, they are Tenacity, Texture and Price. And their support rates are 51.52%, 79.49% and 71.79% respectively.
Question 13:
This question surveyed whether people would support the related activities of recycled paper. 419 of 429 people supported and 10 of 429 people opposed, they take the proportion of 97.67% and 2.33% respectively. It shows the public’s passion and support on paper recycling.
Section 3:
Question 14:
This question began our search for the level of understanding about synthetic biology. The result showed a majority (more than 80%) of the sample having limited understanding to this subject. This result is reasonable since that for someone that doesn’t major in biology, chemistry or related subjects, their understanding of synthetic biology will only be at high school level (understanding basic mechanisms). However, I do believe that there are defects of our phrasing of the question, as that we did not explain what the boundaries for “decent understanding” is and “limited understanding” is. But our results still reflects that there is a need for a bigger population to understand synthetic biology.
Question 15:
This was an exception of a multi-answer question where the samples were to pick how they came to know synthetic biology. We believe that this question will help us gain knowledge of how we could educate others. As expected, about 50% of the samples stated that they had learned some synthetic biology through the internet. The subject we are asking is relatively unconventional that had only emerged in recent years to the public view especially in China. Internet being also a new trend since the 21st century, helped people today to learn things at expeditious speed. Our data also showed a high percentage choosing school education and nonprofit advertisements. This revealed that society are becoming more and more aware of this field of study.
Question 16:
This question seeks to understand how willing people are to participate in activity of synthetic biology. 70% of the samples were willing to participate. We found this number higher than expected since that not everyone is interested in synthetic biology and that they also have their own business to do. But we were also happy to see that many have this enthusiasm towards this subject.
Question 17:
This last question touched on the things that would attract one to such activity mentioned in the previous question. It was meant to help us better organize our activities. We found that majority of the people wanted to learn the applications, possible future and experiment theories of synthetic biology while not many wanted to learn about related subject’s history. This fits well with our project as that we are doing something new that could help the society. However, both question 16 and 17’s result could be influenced if our sample’s age group or education level was different. But overall, we see a general support to what we are doing.
At last, we believe that our questionnaire was successful in determining the general public’s view on recycled paper and synthetic biology. We find that there are defects in the current recycled paper that should be fixed and that many are looking forward to this kind of technology. These data explained the necessity of our research and led the direction to what kind of improvements are needed. We also found that synthetic biology is still a subject of unknown by many meaning that education is needed. We were happy to see that many are willing to take part in activities to learn more about this subject. This questionnaire had also helped us to plan our activities based on the samples’ needs.
