Assessing Attitudes about Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI): The Development and Use of a Questionnaire

The purpose of this article is to trace the development, validation and use of a questionnaire for evaluating teacher and student attitudes regarding Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI is a framework, developed by the European Union, which provides general standards to guide the development of trust and confidence of the public regarding advances in science and technology, and the development of their participation in these advances. The article traces the development of the RRI framework and focuses on its educational component, whose goal is to sensitize teachers and students into "RRI-based thinking" about past and current scenarios regarding the development of science and technology advances. The use of the RRI questionnaire is demonstrated through the presentation of teacher and student data taken before and after the implementation of RRI-based modules, developed in the EU-funded Irresistible Project. Based on this work, we suggest that the RRI questionnaire can be used to assess the development of attitudes regarding RRI across diverse populations of teachers, students, scientists, consumers and other members of the general public.