Mapping and Explaining Antibiotics Awareness across Europe

Since Fleming’s discovery in 1928, antibiotics have been widely used in medicine for therapeutical and in farming for prophylactic purposes. Their improper and excessive and - sometimes - unjustified use led to the development of bacteria’s resistance to all the antibiotics classes discovered so far (Alanis, 2005; Lau et al., 2017). Consequently, bacteria’s resistance to antibiotics poses a major global challenge to human and animal health (Sultan et al., 2018). Since the problem is mostly due to both professionals and laypeople’s action, a focus on awareness of antibiotics resistance and understanding of antibiotics may be part of its solution. The present study had two aims: (1) to mobilise existing data to map antibiotics awareness in Europe over time and across regions (NUTS 2/3); (2) to investigate the relationship between awareness and wider science culture. For these purposes, we conducted secondary data analysis on Eurobarometer (EB) databases (years: 1989, 1992, 2001/2, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2016, 2018) containing items on antibiotics awareness (e.g., the knowledge item “antibiotics kill viruses”). First, we conducted descriptive analyses to gauge changes in antibiotics awareness over time and across regions. Second, by employing a confirmatory factor analysis, we defined European regions of science culture based on four science indicators (PREK: Progress, Reserve, Knowledge, and Engagement; Bauer & Suerdem, 2019). Third, by means of regression analyses, we investigated the relationship between culture indicators and antibiotics awareness.