Emerging Technologies: Public Health Educators’ Knowledge And Attitudes Toward Global Sensor Networks

Abstract

The world-wide networking of sensing devices planned by some computer corporations will have major implications for socio-political systems including national security, public health, and environmental monitoring. The early acceptance or failure of these deployments will depend on first users’ knowledge and attitudes about it. Public health educators are on the forefront of environmental and global health research and policy and, as such, their involvement in development and implementation are critical to the public’s acceptance of this technology. This correlation study used two adapted instruments - one on knowledge of technology and one on attitudes - and captured demographic information on 155 public health faculty. The authors found that Public Health university educators were not very knowledgeable about sensor systems in general (76% with little to no knowledge); their highest level of knowledge was on benefits and uses of global sensor networks (22% had some or more knowledge), and lowest was on plans to deploy them. The sample had moderately positive attitudes (range 1-7) about the idea of global sensor deployment (M = 4.57, N = 155) and a slight positive correlation between knowledge and attitudes on global sensor networks.