UNRAVELING THE PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF CHEMISTRY: A REVIEW OF THE ACADEMIC LITERATURE

Given the importance of chemistry to society, we sought to understand how the perception of chemistry has been portrayed in academic literature. To this end, we conducted a literature review, analyzing 54 scientific articles published between 1996 and 2022 in 36 journals and written by 135 authors. The results show that this subject is still under-researched, with occasional publications. If, on the one hand, the publications focus on investigating students' perceptions of chemistry, with a more disciplinary approach and focused on understanding the content or the relationship with the discipline, on the other hand, there are few efforts to investigate the attitudes and social representations of chemistry as an area of knowledge.

Keywords:
chemophobia; attitudes to chemistry; popularization of science; public image of chemistry