Studying public attitudes toward STI through open panel data. The CIVES Observatory

Monitoring public opinion toward STI has become central to both research and evidence-based policy: processes such as digitalization, the AI penetration and the diffusion of green technologies do not unfold in isolation, but within a broader interdependence among social, economic and political dynamics. This requires individual-level data to identify emerging social trends related to STI, understanding how change in one sphere reverberates across others, at the intersection of social and civic dimensions. We highlight the analytical potential of surveys built on open research panels for producing high-frequency and longitudinal data on individual attitudes toward STI at the national level, as mean to nurturing the policy-scholars debate. We address two questions: (1) What is the analytical added value of a national-scale panel run by a public institution for studying attitudes toward STI? (2) How do panel data enable the analysis of the interconnections between science-related attitudes and other social dimensions, while revealing subgroup dynamics?