Dealing with climatechange

The Yale forum on Climate and the Media discussed the use of animation to communicate the issue of climate change.

The Desert Research Institute (DRI) also introduces a project which uses animation to show how the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range area should cope with climate change.

For details, please see Communicating Science with Animations.

Worldwide polls about climate change

Publics want more government action on climate change: Global poll. (July 29, 2009)

This poll was conducted by the World Public Opinion survey in more than 20 countries/ regions including Taiwan, Mid-East countries, African countries, as well as the US and Europe. The percentages of public reaction to the level of government action needed vary. On average, the world publics think the government should place high priority when dealing with climate change, with a score of 7.33 on a 0-10 scale. The reaction of Taiwanese people is slightly higher than the average, whereas the Americans scored the lowest among the countries surveyed. People from Mexico (9.09), China (8.86), and Turkey (8.34) are among the highest-scoring countries.

Data set and documentation are available from DRUM.

Awareness of climate change and threat vary by region. (Dec. 11, 2009)

This poll was conducted by Gallup in 128 countries. However, it is a pity that this poll asked only two questions--awareness and threat. Data may be available upon request.

Multi-Country Poll Reveals That Majority of People Want Action on Climate Change, Even if it Entails Costs

[Abstract from DRUM]
A new poll of 15 nations, most of them in the developing world, finds that majorities of the people canvassed want their governments to take steps to fight climate change, even if that entails costs. People signaled they would support public measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions and step up adaptation measures. For example, respondents would support higher fuel efficiency standards for cars, preserving or expanding forests, and extending funding to vulnerable countries so they can develop hardier crops suited to more severe climates.

World publics willing to bear costs of combating climate change (Oct. 11, 2006)

This poll included five countries--Australia, India, China, South Korea, and the US. This poll also asked only two questions: 1) whether global warming is a critical threat, and 2) whether the government should take steps even if it involves costs.

[Abstract from survey report]
Climate change is seen as among the most important international issues by large numbers of those polled around the world. Sixty-eight percent of Australians call global warming a “critical threat” to their country’s “vital interests.” About the same proportion (67%) of South Koreans call it a critical threat, putting it at the top of their list of key challenges. Nearly half of the Chinese (47%) call the issue critical, making it number three on their list. For Indians (51%) and Americans (47%), global warming is around the middle of the list of 13 possible threats. Substantial numbers also consider it to be an “important” threat.

International Data Bank

Gallup International Polls

World Public Opinion

Data can be downloaded from DRUM maintained by the University of Maryland

Pew Global Attitudes Projects

ASEP/ JDS

dataset sources

A nice website from NCSU that collects many sources of datasets.

1. Gallup Poll News Service & Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing
2. Lexis-Nexis Navigation
3. The Odum Institute for Research in the Social Sciences
4. Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
5. Roper Center Public Opinion Archives
6. ICPSR

Powerpoint poster template

I need to make two posters to a conference in the near future and am therefore looking for good templates for me to use. Here are some nice sites that I bump into online.

1. Posterpresentation.com



2.Genigraphics

Policy and public opinion

Page, B. I., & Shapiro, R. Y. (1983). Effects of public opinion on policy. The American Political Science Review, 77(1), 175-190.

Just come across this article and think it is a good reference for arguments that link public opinion with policy making.

Another related article is: Page, B. I., & Shapiro, R. Y. (1982). Changes in Americans' policy preferences, 1935-1979. Public Opinion Quarterly, 46(1), 24.

ELSI

ELSI represents Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications for nanotechnology. This is an important field of research in public understanding of science in general, and nanotechnology in particular. Scientists and policy-makers nowadays have recognized the need to connect with the general public. Science and technology, after all, is not something happening only in the laboratory. It has pivotal impacts on human life and the society.

Nanotechnology is not only considered to be able to alter "human characteristics," it can also bring about potential dangers that are unknown at the current state of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, it challenges people's deep-rooted beliefs about life and nature. In other words, to the general public, nanotechnology is not just a scientific issue, it is also a social issue which lends relevance to everyday life.

The book Societal Implications of Nanosciences and Nanotechnology was published in 2001 and derived from a workshop sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF). It addresses the need and efforts to understand the relationship between human, the environment, society, and the technology.

Excerpts of book chapters can also be found here.

Gallup polls about religion and moral attitudes

just come across some nice poll data about how religiosity affects public perception of morally-loaded issues, such as stem cell research, abortion, homosexuality, etc. There are also some interesting international stuff.

1. Stem Cell Research Morally OK in Britain, Canada, and U.S.

This article indicated that stem cell research is in general deemed morally acceptable in the three countries. However, Americans are more likely than people in the other two countries to find the research unacceptable. This disparity was attributable to the varied roles of religiosity in these countries. Americans consider God to be important and go to church more often than Canadians and the British. And this central role of religion makes Americans more likely to make a connection between morality and controversial scientific/technological issues.

2. Worlds Apart: Religion in Canada, Britain, U.S.

This poll also painted a more religious public in the US. Americans not only go to church more often, but also more likely to say God is very important in their lives. Please also see a related survey: Most Britons, Canadians "Unchurched"

3. Moral issues

This poll tracks public evaluation on the state of moral values across time. In general, people are not satisfied with the current condition of moral values--more people consider it to be poor than good or excellent (a difference of 28%) in 2009. This disparity has remained since 2006. However, it should be noted that in 2009 a lot more Americans, compared with previous years, feel the condition of moral values is getting better. This poll also showed public perception of moral acceptability in relation to several social issues.

Mplus resource

Here are a couple of online resources in relation to the statistical program--Mplus.


1. UCLA: Multilevel modeling in Mplus (with handouts and video demos)
2. UCLA: Introduction to Mplus
3. UTexas: Mplus introduction
4. UCLA: Mplus class note-Path Analysis
5. UCLA: Mplus annotated output (Multinomial regression)
6. UCLA: Mplus data analysis example: logistic regression

Also read the online material developed by a faculty member at UNC about the concepts and assumptions about path analysis.

Mediation effect

Many of the studies in social sciences involve a mediating variable, which filters the effect of the original independent variable on the dependent variable. There are many ways of testing mediation. I just want to highlight some wonderful websites and resources that deal with this topic.

Calculation for the Sobel test. The website contains explanations of concepts and easy-to-use calculators for indirect effect.

Dr. Andrew Hayes at the Ohio State University also developed a website and SPSS macros for the test of indirect effect. Please click here for the SPSS syntax to activate the macro. There is also a PDF file that explains the steps after the activation of macro.

In fact, the software Mplus has proved to be very handy in testing indirect effect. By specifying the "ind" command, Mplus shows not only the effect size, but also the test score and significance of the coefficient.

The website developed by Dr. David Kenny is also very helpful. He is one of the author in the famous piece about mediation [The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations, (Baron & Kenny, 1986)].

Nano Song

just found this on YouTube today. interesting song about nano.



see ACS Nanotation for more information about the video contest.

Information about European Countries

Here are some reliable "facts" about European countries.

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. BBC established a nice database about background characteristics, political information, and even media systems in the world. Please see Country Profiles at BBC.


2. EUROPA is the portal site of the European Union (http://europa.eu). It provides up-to-date coverage of European Union affairs and essential information on European integration. It also has statistics and public opinion info. It's worth checking out! There is a specific section that devotes to some statistics in relation to science and technology in Europe.

3. Country Profiles by the Library of Congress.

4. UN Data--A world of information.

5. US Department of State, background notes.

MEDIA & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

6. European Journalism Center. The European Journalism Centre (EJC) is an independent, international, non-profit institute dedicated to the highest standards in journalism, primarily through the further training of journalists and media professionals. It has "media landscape" for all European countries.

7. EB68.2 E-Communications Household Survey (pdf), with summary sheet for individual 27 countries.

8. EB67.2 Scientific research in the media, accessible at European Union Public Opinion.

DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE

9. Science of Latvia.

10. Science and Society in Europe.

Social amplification of risk--Burns et al 1993

Incorporating Structural Models into Research on the Social Amplification of Risk: Implications for Theory Construction and Decision Making

This study empirically tests the framework of social amplification of risk, which argues that "social and economic impacts of an adverse event are determined not only by the direct biological and physical consequences of the event, but by the interaction of powerful psychological, cultural, social, and institutional processes that amplify or attenuate public response to the event" (Burns et al., p612).

In this study, the authors examined the causal relationship between "risk signals," "media coverage," "public response," and some physical consequences of adverse events.

108 hazards were identified and evaluated by experts to determine their political and economic implications. Public responses were measured by the level of political involvement, worry, and risk-reducing action induced by the hazards. Although measured at the individual level, these public responses variables were then aggregated to represent macro-level preferences. Information about media coverage was also collected to reflect the number of stories, duration of coverage, and issue half-life.

The most important finding of this study rests with the fact that both "casualties" and "property damage," indicators of the consequence of hazards, showed only marginally significant effect on the societal impact of the issues. It is, instead, the media coverage of and public reactions to the issues that matter.

However, I have several questions after reading this article.
1. What is the subject of amplification? Is it the social and political impact of the issue or the perceived risk of the issue? For example, some people may not care as much about what the risks are going to do to other people, or the whole society, as to themselves. Employing an "objective" measure of the impact of hazards does not hit the target idea. It is also difficult for me to draw a linkage between public reaction measures with the "impact" variable formed by the opinions of the experts.

2. Based on my first question, the causal order of their model (with "societal impact" being the final dependent variable ) may be open for adjustment. Can public worry and willingness to participate politically serve as the final outcome and be predicted by the "perceived" societal impact of hazards?

3. Showing a strong relationship between, for example, media coverage and societal impact does not necessarily mean that these hazards were "amplified." To what baseline does this amplification or attenuation compare? I think this is the most critical issue that scholars in this line of research should address.

Modernization and human development

The thesis of the third chapter of this book is the relationship between modernization and value change. In other words, do people living in countries with different levels of development also possess different values?

The authors, in particular, examine two sets of values--traditional vs secular and survival vs self-expression. On the other hand, modernization is operationalized as the proportion of labor forces in the industry sector and service sector.

The results confirmed two relationships. Materialism, characterized by the dominance of the industry sector, was associated with secular values; that is, less deferred to authority and religious guidance. Quite differently, post-materialism, characterized as the dominance of the service sector, was associated with self-expression values (i.e., more trust in people and higher demand in political participation).

Further analysis showed that these values were also predicted by the country's colonial legacy. For example, what values people hold depend on whether they were subject to the impact of communist, Confucianism, Catholic, or Protestant.

So, does the tradition of a country shape public values more strongly than colonial background? For instance, does an Islamic living in the middle east possess values more similar to another Islamic residing in other parts of the world than a Catholic in the same area? Their research suggests that the effect of a country overrides that of the political background. In other words, a Chinese in the US will hold values much more similar with an American in the US than another Chinese in Hong Kong.

Sjoberg (1998). Workd Views, Political Attitudes and Risk Perception

This study was published at Risk: Health, Safety & Environment in 1998 and is the first article I read about the limited power of cultural theory in predicting technological risk attitudes.

Basically, this study, with 141 subjects from a church organization in California, aimed to replicate the Dake's piece published in 1990 (Orienting dispositions in the perception of risk). Dake aruged in his study that "cultural bias and social relations" (including hierarchy, individualism, and egalitarianism) better explained people's risk perception than other political ideology and personality reasons.

However, Sjoberg criticized Dake's ideology measure for being too heterogeneous and having low reliability, compared to Rothman and Lichter's measure, in that it included many non-business and -economics related items.

Variables tested in this study, thus, included political attitudes, trust, affect, and Dake's scales, with dependent variables being 36 societal concerns and 51 risk ratings. Sjorboerg found that although trust was pervasively correlated with concerns, it explained only 2.6% of the variance of risks. The same situation is applicable to Dake's scales of world views. In addition, affect was correlated with risks and concerns well.


The more surprising finding pertains to the fact that Dake's scale were not technology related, leading Sjorberg to conclude that "Cultural Theory simply is wrong (p.149)" [in its use of explaining risks].

Related reading:

Peters, E., & Slovic, P. (1996). The Role of Affect and Worldviews as Orienting Dispositions in the Perception and Acceptance of Nuclear Power Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26(16), 1427-1453.

Peters et al (2007). Culture and technological innovation

This is one of the greatest article I've ever read. It is enlightening both conceptually and methodologically. This study was authored by Hans Peter Peters and colleagues, who examined the impact of "institutional trust" and "appreciation of nature" on food biotechnology. Specifically, they compared the dynamics of the two factors in the context of USA and Germany.

They first explained why they study general institutional trust rather than specific trust, although trust towards specific issue or personnel responsible for that issue has been found to exert larger impact on attitudes (e.g., Siegrist & Cvetkovich, 2000 in Risk Analysis). One advantage of using general trust lies in its ability to sort out the methodological ambiguity with respect to the direction of effect. Whereas it is likely that people's level of trust affect their perception of a technology, it is equally possible that their attitudes toward the technology shape how much they trust the officials or institutions responsible for doing research or regulation about the technology.

The authors of the study conceptualize the relationship between trust and attitude by utilizing the idea of a "syndrome," which refers to "a net of concepts that are tied together and vary jointly (p.196)." Peters and colleagues argue that issue-specific trust is part of the attitudinal syndrome and is therefore inappropriate to be used as a predictor, based on the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph. General trust, however, is external to the food biotechnology attitude syndrome. Thus, if a correlation is found, the causal direction should go from general trust to attitude, but not vice versa.

They found that "appreciation of nature" was associated with attitudes towards food biotechnology in both countries. However, the different levels of appreciation results in different levels of support. Germans were found to be more appreciative of nature and therefore possessed more negative attitudes towards food biotechnology than the Americans. It should be noted that although the internal reliability of the measure of "appreciation" is not very high, it predicts the outcome very well.

Quite surprisingly, trust had a positive relationship with attitudes only in the US, not in Germany. The authors attribute the finding to several reasons.

1. The attitudes of regulatory institutions are more consistent in the US; that is, more supportive of biotechnology. However, in Germany, people saw mixed signals from the equivalent institutions. That's why trust appears to be less irrelevant in Germany.

2. The higher relevance of trust in the US also results from the "technocratic" framing of the issue, as opposed to the more "political" nature in Germany. When an issue was discussed within the technocratic discourse, its scope was restricted to the scientists and administrative realm, which rendered institutional trust more relevant in the decision making process. This point is also illustrated in the Attention Cycles and Frames in the Plant Biotechnology Debate by Nisbet and Huge.

3. The awareness of the issue also makes the Germans more likely to generate their own assessment based on the available and relevant arguments than their US counterparts.

4. Trust in institutions is a more effective mechanisms for the resolution of uncertainty in a society emphasizing individualism/ universalism than in a society emphasizing particularism/ collectivism. In the latter type of society, trust is mainly established in specific people, not impersonal actors.

In concluding, the authors suggest that the concept of trust and nature should be examined in the context of nanotechnology. They also call for studies with respect to other cultural dimensions, such as moral and religious beliefs.

The structure of public opinion (about Biotech) in The Making of Global Controversy

In a chapter in Bauer and Gaskell's book, Biotechnology: The making of a global controversy, some researchers analyzed what constitutes public opinion towards the technology.

Interestingly, they found geographical differences in terms of expectations towards biotechnology. Specifically, countries located in southern Europe are more optimistic about the technology, whereas those in the north are more pessimistic.

Another important finding pertains to the relationship between general attitudes towards biotechnology and those towards specific applications of biotechnology, such as food production, genetic testing, xenotransplant, and so on. The researchers found that these two sets of attitudes were closely related, suggesting that public opinion about biotech applications are very much based on their general impression on biotechnology. This finding somewhat parallels Kahan et. al.'s study which found that people holding positive views on other technologies also tend to be optimistic about nanotechnology. It also resonates with my own research which found that ambivalent attitudes toward Genetically Modified Food and Plants would also result in similar uncertain attitudes toward nanotechnology.

A quote from the chapter reads, "respondents applied general schema relating to biotechnology and technology to the more focused applications about which they were questioned" (p. 215).

Of course, knowledge is a critical determinants of public attitudes. However, the researchers found only moderate effects of knowledge (both subjective and objective) on the perception of risk, utility, moral acceptability, and encouragement. While knowledge was not associated with attitude differentiation, defined as the variance of attitudinal difference with respect to the six specific applications, it was connected to attitude extremity. In other words, those who had higher knowledge tended to have stronger attitudes towards biotechnology, either positive or negative.

One results that strike me is that religiosity accounted for only marginally the variance of attitudes. As we may know, the most controversial aspect of biotechnology rests with its interference with nature and the scientists' act of "playing god," it is surprising that religiosity, the main source of people's moral discipline, did not kick in as an attitudinal determinants. However, the limited effect at the individual level does not necessarily mean the same thing at the country level, as our recent study in Nature Nanotechnology has suggested.

The authors called for more well-designed information campaigns to keep people informed about the pros and cons of biotechnology. However, this call for more information should be understood in conjunction with several recent studies which identified the fact that people interpret information based on their value predispositions or worldviews. Simply providing information just does not help people understand the technology very much.

Nature Nanotechnology (December, 2008). Nanotechnology and the Public

For the first time, Nature Nanotechnology (Impact Factor: 14.917) published three studies on the social impact of nanotechnology in the same issue.

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Scheufele, D. A., Corley, E. A., Shih, T.-j., Dalrymple, K. E., & Ho, S. S. (2008). Religious beliefs and public attitudes toward nanotechnology in Europe and the United States. Nat Nano, advanced online publication.

Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Slovic, P., Gastil, J., & Cohen, G. (2008). Cultural cognition of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Nat Nano, advanced online publication.

Pidgeon, N., Harthorn, B. H., Bryant, K., & Rogers-Hayden, T. (2008). Deliberating the risks of nanotechnologies for energy and health applications in the United States and United Kingdom. Nat Nano, advanced online publication.
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I will focus my discussion on the first two studies, since I haven't read the third one. To begin with, the Kahan and Scheufele studies shared a common theme--there exist something that shapes how people interpret messages. Kahan and colleagues suggest it to be cultural worldviews (such as egalitarian/hierarchical and communitarian/individualist ), whereas Scheufele et. al. see religiosity as the determining predisposition.

To say it simple, what these researchers argue is that the same information do not always conjure up the same meaning for people because they possess different worldviews and value predispositions. For people holding a egalitarian and communitarian worldviews, because of their pro-technology disposition, they tend to attribute information a positive light. In contrast, those who are individualist and hierarchical tend to see exactly the same information more negatively because of their proclivity to strive a balance between nature and technology, along with a balance between the rich and the poor.

Similarly, religiosity did the same job. Those who are more religious tend to see more risks associated with nanotechnology. What is noteworthy is that this relationship not only appear at the individual level, but also at the country level. Specifically, religion played a relatively important role in the US, as opposed to other countries with similar level of human development, which, in turn, leads US people to possess more reserved attitudes toward nanotechnology, compared with the more secular country such as the UK, France, and Germany. Such a difference in the level of religiosity and secular was also documented in the Secred and Secular book authored by Norris and Inglehart.

These studies were also covered by a lot of media organizations. For example:

Religion 'shun Nanotechnology' on BBC










Attitudes about nanotechnology vary according to religious and cultural differences on US News and World Report

Sjoberg (2002). Attitudes toward technology and risk: Going beyind what is immediately given

Prof. Sjoberg of Center of Risk Research in Sweden wrote an article about risk perception and the factors shaping it. He mainly focused on two technologies: gene technology and nuclear power.

As indicated by the title, this study goes beyond the properties of risks, which most scholars took as the essence of risk research. Specifically, he looked at other factors, such as the relationship between nature and technology as well as various types of trust with respect to their ability in accounting for public risk perception. In addition, he also examined how utility (benefit), risk, trust, and active risk denial accounted for general attitudes toward technology.

He found that the traditional "psychometric model," in which dread and novelty were considered as the main determinants of public risk perception, accounted for only limited proportion of variance. The addition of the variable--tampering with nature--increased the model's explanatory power. Furthermore, he contends that worldviews were not a good predictor of risk perception.

His result also indicated a less strong relationship between trust and risk perception than that of Siegrist (The influence of trust...on the acceptance of gene technology, 2000, Risk Analysis). He attributed this difference to measurement. Whereas Siegrist used the Likert scale for his measure of trust and risk, Sjoberg used ratings. Sjoberg demonstrated in this study how the "common response factor" may heighten the relationship between trust and risk, a very interesting methodological point.

In general, attitudes toward technology were accounted for mostly by perception of the benefits, followed by risks and, sometimes, the technology's "replacibility." The consequence of a risk was also found to exert more impact on public attitudes than the size of the risk itself.

This study overall laid out a bunch of important factors shaping public perception of risks and attitudes toward technology. However, it seems to me that too many variables were examined without a coherent theme explicating why these factors should be explored together with each other. Furthermore, as with other risk research, this study ask its respondents how "risky" a technology is without exploring the specific risks associated with these technologies. For example, people may consider nuclear power as risky because of the risks in relation to radiation, waste management, and safety, but not other areas. Of course, the 109 college student sample also posed questions for the generalizability of his results.

News coverage and risk

My work recently involves the examination of how media cover risks. The area of risk is broad and can include environmental, health, technological hazards and so on. During my search for literature, I come across a website: Risk: Health, Safty, & Environment.

Signal and Noise, by Boykoff and Rajan (2007), is another piece comparing news coverage of (environmental/ global climate change) risks in the US and UK.

An interesting idea is that something considered risky in one country/ culture may not trigger the same perception in another culture. My goal is to identify why and how these cultural difference in worldviews affects media representation of the risk issues.

Mass communications and agrobiotechnology.