"Although a detailed discussion of the conceptualization and measurement of civic scientific literacy is provided in the refereed literature (Miller, 1998), it may be helpful to summarize this measure briefly. In broad terms, to be classified as civic scientifically literate, a citizen needs to display:
1. an understanding of basic scientific concepts and constructs, such as the molecule, DNA, and the structure of the solar system,
2. an understanding of the nature and process of scientific inquiry, and
3. a pattern of regular information consumption (Miller, 1998).
In practical terms, the level of concept vocabulary and process understanding required reflects the level of skill required to read most of the articles in the Tuesday science section of the New York Times, watch and understand most episodes of Nova, or read and understand many of the popular science books sold in bookstores today.
Using this measure, approximately 10 percent of American adults qualified as civic scientifically literate in the late 1980's and early 1990's, but this proportion increased to 17 percent in 1999 (see Figure 1). Since each percentage point in a national survey of adults aged 18 and over in the United States represents approximately 2 million individuals, this result means that about 34 million Americans were civic scientifically literate by the end of the 20th century. This rate of civic scientific literacy is higher than that found in Canada, the European Union, or Japan, using similar measures (Miller, Pardo, & Niwa, 1997; Miller and Pardo, 2000). At the same time, it is a level that may be too low for the requirements of a strong democratic society in a new century of accelerating scientific and technological development. "
Full article here:
http://www.fas.org/faspir/2002/v55n1/scilit.htmBlacknad.
