Perceptions about Science and Technology in Chile: Exploratory and Confirmatory Factorial Analysis for the first version of the National Survey of Scientific and Technological Culture

The social and political concern regarding Science and Technology (S & T) has gained relevance, both because of its contributions to the labor and medical field and because of its negative externalities linked to deregulated development. In this public policy landscape, States define S & T as a line of development and implement various interventions to educate and raise awareness among their population. In order to investigate the beliefs and values of Chilean citizenship, this article aims to validate through Factorial Analysis, in its Exploratory and Confirmatory modalities, a set of attitudinal reagents collected by the first version of the Survey of Social Perception on Science and Technology (SSPST), applied in 2015 to a representative sample of 7 637 people. The AF analyzes derived three factors: Notion of progress; Everyday life and ways of life; Social and environmental externalities with adequate adjustment indexes, particularly in the exploratory phase (RMSEA = .07; CFI = .971; TLI = .928). These dimensions expose the appreciative ambivalence on S & T, recognizing on the one hand its importance as a source of progress and innovation for the country, despite declaring uncertainty that its unregulated development entails for its daily life and work in particular in the damage to the environment, tension in the suppression of employment and the transgression of ethical boundaries.