公民的科学素养关系到人才的综合素质和创造力以及国家的综合竞争力。为了解中国公民科学素养水平的现状，中国已对公民科学素养进行了8次调查。本文通过对比2001、2003、2007、2010年4次“中国公民科学素养调查”的数据，分析中国公民科学素养水平的变化、不同群体公民科学素养的比较、公民关于科技信息问题的变化等。研究结果表明：中国公民科学素养的水平整体呈现上升趋势，对科学观点的了解也呈小幅上升趋势，对迷信现象的信任程度整体呈现逐年递减趋势。中国公民科学素养的水平存在群体差异，具备基本科学素养的公民呈现年轻化的特征、男性比例高于女性；高学历公民科学素养水平相对较高；具备基本科学素养的公民超过半数分布于东部地区，中部次之，西部最低。除接受正规教育外，电视和报刊是中国公民获取科技信息的主要渠道，兴趣点集中在文化与教育方面，教师、科学家、医生对科学技术事业的认识水平相对较高。

The public scientific literacy is related with the comprehensive quality and the creativity of the talents and the comprehensive competitive power of a country. The survey of the public scientific literacy may serve as an important reference for the policy-making and assessment. It was conducted eight times in our country. This paper analyzes the changes of citizens' scientific literacy, makes comparisons among different groups and the changes of public cognition of scientific and technological information based on the data obtained in surveys of the years 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2010. An improvement of the public scientific literacy is seen on the whole, with a small increase of science understanding and a decrease of superstition dependence year by year. An analysis of the differences in population groups about the public scientific literacy shows that the age of people with the basic scientific literacy becomes younger in average and the male have higher proportion than the female, the people with higher education tend to have higher standard, more than half of the people with the basic scientific literacy are in the east region, the middle region takes the second place and the west region takes the last place. Besides the formal education, the television and the press are the main channels for people to obtain science and technological information. Public interest focuses on culture and education. Teachers, scientists and doctors tend to have a high cognitive level on science and technology.