[Opinions of a group of university students about science and technology]

To learn the opinions of university students of four different areas on the impact of science and technology on society.

One Hundred and sixty three close to graduate students of the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana campus Iztapalapa, distributed as follows: Administration 59, Biology 50, Social Sciences 36 and Engineering 18.

For the survey we translated into spanish part of a questionnaire employed in several countries to explore ideas on the impact of science and technology on society of several groups. It contained general questions such as. Do you believe that science and technology are equally good or bad to society, or degree of knowledge of several technologies such as computation or in vitro fertilization. It includes also more specific questions, such as would your have problems with the use of genetically modified vegetables?

The results suggested that Administration and Social Sciences students had less interest in Science and Technology than the other, and that in general, the knowledge of all students is rather limited including biotechnology, genetic enginering and gene therapy. We compared the results with those obtained previously in a group of Mexican Physicians and Biology students from India, Thailand and Singapor.