In this piece of work, we collaborated with the language consultants Maslansky to explore the views, attitudes and reactions of members of the public with regards to common approaches and language used to communicate about genomics, with a particular focus on those groups traditionally excluded from or under-represented in genomics research.
Language matters. It plays a vital role in determining how public audiences perceive the relevance of a topic, whether they feel at ease and confident to discuss it, and think discussing it can make a difference. Through a series of focus groups with 100 participants from different ethnicities and walks of life, we explored if there are any differences between ‘what we say’ and ‘what they hear’ when talking about genomics, and what language could work better to connect with these audiences.