Overall, Malaysians were interested in STI and only a small percentage was unsure or did not know much about STI.
Most respondents (84% of them) stated that they were interested or very interested in "the use of new inventions and technologies", followed by "new medical discoveries" (79%), "innovation" (78%) and "new scientific discoveries" (76%).
Less than half of all respondents (46%) were able to correctly answer the factual knowledge questions in the 2014 survey.
The public's average knowledge levels of STI hovered below 50% over the past 16 years (1998 till 2014). Most Malaysians correctly answered "the earth travel around the sun" (85%) and "the centre of the earth is very hot" (75%).
More than half of all respondents (53%) in the 2014 survey said that scientific research was more beneficial than harmful, about 33% said it was equally beneficial as well as harmful, 4% thought that scientific research did more harm than good, while 10% were not sure.
Television was the most popular media in Malaysia, and 89% of respondents also used it as the source of information for learning STI.
The next most popular media for information related to STI was print newspapers (63%), followed by internet (53%), radio (43%), books (39%) and print magazines (24%).
Zoo (31%) and museums (23%) were the two most popular STI related places (Figure 5).
About 13% of respondents had made at least one visit in last 12 months to aquariums, 10% of respondents had visited PETROSAINS, 7% had visited the National Science Centre, and 7% had visited planetariums.