Rylie Neely, Hannah Van Dusen, Alex Preso, and Ethan Kelner
Procedure:
The ENVS 160 class at Lewis and Clark College surveyed 103 people on their views on climate change’s importance compared to other pressing current issues. Half the class, about 40 students, was assigned to survey participants in the Portland’s downtown area, and the other half was assigned to survey periphery citizens of Portland. The surveyors estimated the participants’ age, ethnicity, perceived gender, and area code. Each person surveyed was asked how important climate change is to them personally compared with other issues today and asked to place their importance on a range from 1-10, 1 being not important compared to other issues, and 10 being very important compared to other issues. The surveyors also asked the participants to share their thoughts on climate change. This data was organized on one document so that every student in the class had access to all the data for analysis. The data was compared to nation and cross-national climate change surveys.
Analysis:
Total Average | 7.63 |
Male Average | 7.6 |
Female Average | 7.66 |
Under 30 average | 7.75 |
Over 60 | 8.27 |
Ages 30-60 | 7.22 |
White | 7.76 |
Black | 7.8 |
Hispanic/Latina(o) | 7.67 |
Other/mix/unsure | 6 |
Downtown | 7.65 |
Periphery | 7.57 |
Our data indicated several ways in which people in and around Portland view the importance of climate change in comparison to other social issues. The data had an overall average of 7.63. The highest average of all the individual categories was the Over 60 category, which had a mean value of 8.27, and lowest average was 6 for Other/Mixed/Unsure. The highest individual categories were the Female Average at 7.66 and the Hispanic/Latino Ethnicity at 7.67. These averages, however, do not necessarily compare very accurately, due to the fact that each category had vastly different sample sizes. For instance, there were a total of 85 White people surveyed while only 5 Asian, 8 Black, and 3 Mixed Race people were surveyed. Therefore the lesser surveyed categories may not be representative of their populations.
Ethnicity
The data reflected that for each demographic (gender, race, and age), the average response was relatively the same. Across the board, variation was marginal compared to the overall average, making it appear as though diversity didn’t play a big role on opinion of climate change. This is important to discuss as it suggests that these views on climate change are fairly consistent as our data shows that they are generally agreed upon regardless of differences in age, race, etc. The majority of interviewed people were white, providing an average of 7.76. Because it was the most interviewed category, it has the most concrete average it is used as the benchmark to compare to other ethnicity opinions. The interviewed opinion of those perceived to be Black is very similar with an average of 7.8. The Hispanic average was 7.67 which again shows very little variation. The final category of Unknown Ethnicity had an average of 6, which is slightly lower but not significantly. This collection of diverse opinions shows little variation, but the ethnic sample size was very small compared to the White category and therefore doesn’t have nearly as much variation and could likely be influenced by chance. It is also important to note that of the 103 people interviewed, only 16.5% were non-white.
Age
Age played another role in the diversity of our data. Out of the 103 people interviewed, 35.9% were 30-60 years old and gave an average response of 7.22. Additionally, 14% were over 60 and had a response of 8.27. Finally, 49.5% were in the Under 30 range and gave an average of 7.75. The variation between these groups was again minimal, but it is interesting to note that the eldest demographic was the most concerned about the issue of the changing climate.
National
According to the research company Gallup, 64% of Americans are concerned/worried about climate change. If we were to similarly analyze our data to find a percentage of people that were relatively concerned about climate change, we would have to make an assumption that any score of 5 or above is showing concern for climate change. Allowing this reference, the raw data shows that out of the 103 people interviewed, 90 gave a response of a 5 or above, which shows that 87.4% of interviewed subjects were concerned with climate change compared to other issues today. Only 12.6% gave a score of 4 or lower. A total of 27 out of 103 interviewed subjects gave a response of 10, showing that 26% thought that climate change is the most important issue today. Comparing our data with Gallup’s data, the population of Portland is more concerned about climate change than the general populace of the United States. Nevertheless, our data was not randomized nor was it a very large sample size, so we can not claim that it acts as a true reflection of the Portland population.
However progressive Portland is believed to be, there were a variety of answers collected from the surveys we conducted. Many of the responses that are considered lower (1-4), commented that other issues such as poverty, world hunger, and women’s rights should take precedent over climate change. One quote taken from the data, “I have 2 daughters, and with all that’s happening right now with women’s rights, climate change falls pretty far down on the list. Plus, you can do a lot to the climate before anything happens, it’s not big enough to be affected by you or I,” reveals this sentiment. The specific question asked was,“If you compare climate change to other issues today, how important is it to you personally?” This question didn’t ask if climate change was important to them; It asked the person being surveyed how important it was compared to other issues in the world. By asking the question in this particular way, many people felt that other issues outweighed climate change. On the other hand, there are also people in this category who felt that climate change posed no threat, was not an issue, or chose not to comment. In a Yale study, 63% of Americans were reported to believe in climate change while only 52% were worried about climate change. An even smaller percentage, 32%, believed that climate change would affect them personally. The varied responses from our survey could reflect the discrepancy of belief and concern. Although many people in the U.S. believe in climate change, the perceived personal risk from climate change is fairly minor. A less concerned audience who believes that they are not personally at risk could rank other global issues as a higher priority than climate change.
Reasons for Disagreement
There are many factors that go into determining why some people believe climate change holds greater importance than other issues in the world or not. Opinions are formed differently depending on one’s background, where they grew up, how their parents raised them, what religion they follow, their views on politics, and so on. In the United States today there is also a large geographic correlation between political views and the cities/states people live in, which is one of the factors investigated in this assignment. The national percentage of adults who believe climate change is occurring lies at 64%, while the state of Oregon is slightly higher at 67%. According to Pew Research, globally 40% of people believed that climate change would harm them personally whereas only 15% of people in the U.S. believe that climate would harm them personally. Although Portland is a relatively progressive area, the U.S. is less personally concerned about climate change than the world population.
Group Reflection
Our group anticipated the results to show that Portland residents place high importance on climate change, especially the younger generations as they tend to be more outspoken on this sort of issue. However, our results were very different from our expectations. We were surprised to see that the Over 60 category actually represented viewpoints that placed the highest comparative importance on the issue of climate change. Older generations are usually associated with more conservative views. It is possible that this can be attributed to our random sampling method, however it was surprising nonetheless.
Another interesting observation we had was that people who gave climate change a lower rating were generally hesitant to extrapolate further upon why they felt this way. They often replied with “no comment” or were very brief in their reasoning. This may have been due to the fact that the surveyors are students at Lewis & Clark College in an environmental studies course, which could have caused the people being surveyed to feel obligated to want to agree (or disagree less) with us. These people may have been afraid to contradict what they assumed our views to be, due to social desirability bias.
All in all, the results were fairly surprising, although we found no extreme values. The interviewees seem to have fairly similar opinions regarding the comparative importance of climate change in juxtaposition with other current issues.