I think awareness with regards to consciousness should be approached scientifically from the perspective of seeing humans as higher beings.
Perhaps, the concepts of evolution might give some insight to consciousness especially in more developed forms.
I think measuring anything that has to do with our perception and topics related to consciousness will best be studied if we can extract useful data from what goes on in our brains.
Consciousness in its different ramifications can however be so abstract when studied largely from a representation of the physical measurements of what goes on in the brain.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagings, Electroencephalograms etc have helped us understand to some degree these concepts, but scientists still have a long way to go in defining more concrete statements about how these things work.