Naima van Tyn

Kyle Edmondson
Statistics
6 December 2021

Response to an Academic Paper and an Experimental Study

Climate change has been a topic of global discussion for centuries. Over the past few decades,
however, the conversation has changed dramatically as we see people taking sides on an issue
that was previously fairly non-partisan. I am interested in looking at the factors that have been
shown to affect the public’s opinion on the issue of climate change (if it’s happening, if humans
are causing it, if it is important, etc).

I chose to look at a study that was related to this issue. The academic article that I chose to look
at was called “‘Global Warming’ or ‘Climate Change’? Whether the Planet is Warming Depends
on the Question Wording” written by Jonathon P Schuldt, Sara H. Konrath, Norbert Schwarz.
This study was asking the question: Does framing the phenomenon of global climate change in
terms of “global warming” vs “climate change” change the level of a person's belief in the issue?
More specifically, they were looking at if people with different political affiliations change their
beliefs more based on the change of phrasing. They surveyed 2261 people who were of mixed
gender, race, age, and political orientation (Republican, Democrat, Independent, and Other).
They asked them a set question around their belief in climate change, changing the wording from
“climate change”(CC) to “global warming”(GW) for different participants, and recorded the
percentage of people who expressed belief based on the phrasing.

Before they conducted the survey, they wanted to “assess whether the use of ‘global warming’
and ‘climate change’ varies by political orientation”(117). They looked at official websites of
partisan think tanks and quantified the number of web pages that included each term. They
collected 36 different websites and used a 1-5 scale (1=mainly Liberal/Democrat: 5=mainly
Conservative/Republican) to rank how partisan they were. Then they ran a chi-square analysis
and found that the majority of conservative websites returned more files with GW terms than
with CC terms while liberal websites returned more files with CC terms than GW terms. This
showed that there is a significant difference between conservative and liberal usage of the terms.

They then conducted the survey. They embedded their question about belief in climate change in
the American Life Panel survey. The participants recorded their political self-identification,
education level, age, ethnicity, and sex. The official survey question was:
You may have heard about the idea that the world’s temperature may have been
going up [changing] over the past 100 years, a phenomenon sometimes called
 ‘global warming’ [‘climate change’]. What is your personal opinion regarding
whether or not this has been happening? (Definitely has not been happening;
Probably has not been happening; Unsure, but leaning towards it has not been
happening; Not sure either way; unsure, but learning toward it has been
happening; Probably has been happening; Definitely had been happening)

They ranked the answers 1-7 (1=Definitely has not been happening; 7=Definitely has been
happening) and classified an answer of 5 or above as showing belief in the issue. All of the 2261
participants were randomly assigned a different version of the question (either with GW phrasing
or with CC phrasing). The hypothesis before the survey was: “we expect belief in the existence
of global climate change to be lower when the phenomenon was referred to as ‘global warming’
rather than ‘climate change,’ especially among Republican respondents” (120). The results
confirmed this hypothesis and were all calculated using chi-square analysis. They found that
overall, 74% of respondents answered a 5 or above when the issue was referred to as CC while
only 67% did so when it was referred to as GW. Although a confidence interval was not included
in the article, they probably did have one but just didn’t report it because the data was shown as
clearly significant.

The results were then broken down into political self-identification and it showed that, of all
political affiliations, Republicans were the most affected by the question phrasing. 60.2% of
Republicans answered 5+ when asked about CC, whereas only 44% answered 5+ when asked
about GW. This means that the majority of Republicans believe in the issue when it is referred to
as “climate change”, but when it is referred to as “global warming” the majority does not believe
the issue is real. This contrasts with the Democrat respondents who were largely unaffected by
the manipulation of the wording: 86.4% of Democrats chose 5+ for CC and 86.9% chose 5+ for
GW. (The slight contradiction to the conclusion in the Democrat answers can be attributed to a
few minor factors that the article did take into consideration). Those who identified as
Independent or Other were impacted very little by the phrase manipulation.

From this research, I have gathered that using the phrasing “climate change” as opposed to
“global warming” will increase the number of Republicans that believe that the issue exists.
However, it will not affect other partisan people as much. Based on the findings of this article,
the issue should always be addressed through the lens of climate change in order to maximize
belief in the existence of the issue, especially in skeptics.

Designing an Experiment:

The article that I read revealed that the way the global climate crisis is framed affects people’s
beliefs on if it exists. This led me to understand more about what affects people’s opinions, what
subtleties can be used to change opinions, and a key issue that those who are working to stop
climate change face. With this information in mind, I want to continue to research what else
affects people’s opinions on climate change. I would like to specifically look at the media and
how it affects people’s opinions on the climate crisis. I ideally would run a study surrounding the
question: To what extent does the way that people get information about climate change affect
the opinions of people who don’t believe in climate change?

For this study, I would need 3 groups of 300 people (900 people) who all have reported low or no
belief in climate change. Throughout the study, the groups would get all of their information in
terms of climate change because, as the article showed, framing information in this way makes
more people believe in the issue. This means that the issue is climate change, the weather is
changing, there will be changes in climates, etc. Group one would get information in the form of
facts; they would be given large amounts of factual data all supporting the claim that climate
change is real, is pressing, etc. Group two would get information through personal stories; they
would hear numerous first hand accounts of the effects of climate change, etc. Group three would
do their own research from a wide selection of sources that support the existence of climate
change etc. but could be from different political perspectives, etc. The information that each
group would get would be almost exactly the same. For example, if the topic was sea levels
rising, Group 1 would get facts about how much it would rise in x amount of years, the global
effects, the causes, etc. Group 2 would hear a story about the inhabitants of a South Pacific
Island who are losing ground rapidly and how they are forced to deal with it. Group 3 would be
given sources all focused on sea level rise from varying points of view.

At the beginning of the study, every participant would take a survey recording their current
beliefs of climate change, their political affiliation, where they get their information on the issue,
how much they know about climate change, etc. They would rate their belief in climate change
on a 1-7 scale (like the survey did in the article above) where 5+ shows substantial belief in the
issue. This scale would be used for a variety of different questions when applicable. After
running the study for --, participants would take the same exact survey again. I would run a
chi-squared test on the results to determine if there was a substantial difference seen from the
beginning of the experiment to the end. I would expect to find that one group would have
increased their belief in the issue more than the others, informing me of which form of
information has the greatest impact on people’s opinions. An additional study could be run where
methods are combined to see if, for example, telling stories with scientific facts included, is the
most effective way to spread the information instead of just one of those methods.

The results of this experiment, if proven to be significant, could be important for a variety of
reasons. For those who are working to create societal or political shifts in order to counteract
climate change, these results could inform the way they spread their information. This could be
politicians, organizations, local governments, etc. It could also be used in educational settings to
impress upon students the importance of the issue from a young age while maximizing belief and
concern for the issue.

Overall, I have gathered that framing the issue as climate change increases the extent to which
people, particularly skeptics, believe in the issue. The way that the information is presented most
likely affects the level of belief as well. If one solely uses climate change terminology and
spreads information using the method proving most effective (or a combination), they will likely
increase the average belief in climate change in their audience.