Science culture and its indicators

The notion of ‘science culture’ is a conceptual as well as an empirical challenge for social researchers. This chapter suggests a language convention to distinguish ‘scientific culture’ from ‘science culture’ and reviews several efforts to conceptualize and measure ‘science culture’ and the difficulties of mobilizing adequate data streams for that purpose. It is time to bring these different attempts into a coherent discussion and move towards a more globally coordinated effort. To that end, the chapter outlines some of the common problems of conceptualizing and measuring science culture and suggests a way forward.