Exploring a Black Box. Cross-national Study of Visits Effects on Visitors to Large Physics Research Centres in Europe

Results from a cross-national quantitative study of 3,301 visitors to four large physics research centers in Europe focus on short-term learning and motivational effects. The authors collected data from these visitors before and after visiting the centers as part of a research project funded by the European Union. Overall, visitors’ knowledge of the research centers increased. However, effects on learning of scientific concepts are not so clear. The visits mostly seem to reaffirm visitors’ prior attitudes and images related to the centers. The findings imply that these visits offer some learning potential and, for school students, increased motivation to enter a scientific profession, but in terms of altering visitors’ images they seem rather ineffective. Nevertheless, because of their uniqueness in allowing different publics an authentic glimpse of the production of scientific knowledge, visits to research centers remain an important public communication activity.