Does anyone know of any links that give data on levels of scientific literacy worldwide? I’m sure that it’s not available for every country (I doubt that such polls have been conducted in, say, Afghanistan…), but I’m curious to see how the US stacks up against other countries.
I don’t know about adults, but for students (mostly in industrialized countries), you might want to poke around the following web sites: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
I can’t link to it, but I found a table of scientific literacy among 15-year-olds in 31 countries for the year 2000. Korea, Japan, and Finland were at the top; Brazil, Mexico, and Luxembourg were at the bottom. The U.S. was in the middle between Hungary and Norway.