Researchers from North Carolina State University, United States, have released a new study that highlights a major flaw in attempting to use a single survey question to assess public opinion on science issues. The team set out to determine if public opinion on complex science issues, such as nanotechnology and biofuels, could be accurately assessed with one question, or whether such issues needed to be broken down into questions on each of the issue’s constituent parts. They found that accuracy depends on breaking it down into multiple questions for people. According to Dr. Andrew Binder, an assistant professor of communication and the study’s lead author, “[T]here was a significant discrepancy among people who responded to the overarching question that the risks of emerging science outweighed the benefits when compared to their responses to the questions about the specific risks and benefits. Namely, those same people really perceived more benefits than risks when given the opportunity to evaluate these attributes separately.” In the nanotechnology survey, they found that “…50 percent of respondents who said risks outweighed benefits actually evaluated nanotechnology positively in the other portion of the survey. In fact, only 35.4 percent of respondents who thought risks outweighed benefits actually calculated more risks than benefits in the specific section of the survey.” The researchers say the bottom line, for social scientists and journalists, is to be very careful when relying on data from a single, overarching survey question.