By Ania Wright – Emma Cooley – Heather Shaw – Zoey Steel
Procedure / Overview:
For this assignment, we went to downtown Portland to discuss the issue of climate change with a few locals. We went downtown into Powell’s Bookstore Cafe to find some willing participants. Though it was tricky to get people to take time out of their busy days to help out a few college students with a survey, the four people we interviewed highlighted the importance of addressing climate change because of the recent election, its connection to many other issues, and its urgency. We asked them how they compare climate change to other issues today on a scale of one to ten, and followed up with asking them more about their thoughts on climate change. We also took note of their perceived age, gender, and ethnicity. We tried to be as unbiased as possible when picking people to ask to complete the survey, but obviously we were limited to willing participants. After collecting our data we compared it to the data from our classmates and then formed our statistics. With these statistics we were able to compare them to national data and draw conclusions.
Results:
Results in relation to Gender:
The mean response for men, out of 78 responses, was 7.7564.
The mean response for women, out of 73 responses, was 7.698.
The mean response for those with other genders/gender unable to be perceived, out of 2 responses, was 5.5.
According to this data, there doesn’t seem to be any significant difference between male and female opinion on climate change. Since there were only two responses in the other category, we are unable to make any conclusion on how that category fits in on climate opinion.
Results in relation to Age:
The mean out of 78 responses for all ages under 30, was 7.5.
The mean out of 53 responses for ages ranging from ages 30 to 60, was 7.18
The mean out of 15 responses for all ages above 60, was 8.62
According to this data, younger people care a lot about climate change, but it seems to dip slightly from ages 30-60. Though it can be inferred that people over 60 care the most about climate change, this would have to be confirmed with a larger sample.
Results in relation to Race/Ethnicity:
The mean response for people perceived as white, out of 118 responses, was 7.762.
The mean response for people perceived as Asian, out of 10 responses, was 7.5.
The mean response for people perceived as black, out of 9 responses, was 8.111.
The mean response for people whose ethnicity could not be determined, out of 8 responses, was 6.75.
The mean response for people perceived as Hispanic/Latina(o), out of 7 responses, was 7.571.
The mean response for people perceived as Native American, out of 1 response, was 7.
The only truly reliable mean value is white responses, since there is a large enough sample size to determine that white people in downtown Portland tend to rate the importance of addressing climate change at about a 7 or 8. People of other ethnicities did not make up a large enough sample size to make a definitive statement, though the data would infer that people of other ethnicities rate climate change at about the same as white responses.
Results in relation to Location:
The mean response for the 106 people surveyed in downtown PDX was 7.79.
The mean response for the 57 people surveyed in the periphery of PDX was 7.49.
It appears from this data that there is not a large difference between people who live in the periphery of Portland to people to live downtown in their differing opinions on climate change.
How Do These Data Compare With National Opinions?
http://zacat.gesis.org/webview/index.jsp?object=http://zacat.gesis.org/obj/fStudy/ZA5500
When looking at the data as described by the International Social Survey Programme, it seems that Portland Oregon is on average higher in terms of importance and relevancy when asked to speak about environmental issues. The ISSP data collection asked questions such as “[what is the] Most important problem which affects you and your family?” There were different categories to rank àpropos to the dangerousness of environmental impacts. The category degrees ranged from not dangerous to extremely dangerous. Then, it averaged what people put 1-10 on each level of “dangerousness”. The dangerousness was used to describe issues such as air pollution, climate change, nuclear waste, water pollution etc. Our team, when surveying in the downtown Portland area, asked the question “If you compare climate change to other issues today, how important is it to you personally?” This question relates to the ISSP question asked as it compares importance of climate change/environmental issues to the personal importance of an individual or family. We noticed once we had analyzed the data that the general population of metro Portland was generally a bit more concerned about the effects of climate change and their importance. Equivalently our rating number “10” would correlate with the extremely dangerous category in the ISSP which is not the most commonly ranked category on the national scale. Portland trends with a “10” of importance while the national tendency is “very dangerous” rather than “extremely dangerous.”
Conclusion:
In conclusion, our group’s research reaffirmed our previous knowledge that people care about climate change and consider it of high importance. Even though some people may disagree about how to act on this issue, we can see from this study trends that point to climate change having some influence in people’s lives even if it is small. What we found surprising, however, was the interesting way in which age played a role in the amount that people placed importance on climate change. We had suspicions that as people got older, they would place less emphasis on climate issues and more on problems that they are more likely to experience within their lifetime. From the data, though, we learned that people above the age of 60 seem to care the most about climate change. Although this data did not change how we personally understand climate change and the debate surrounding it, it is enlightening and uplifting to know that people do in fact consider climate change to be of high importance. The next step would be to take those concerns and actively address them.