Neil Stenhouse

Does Engagement in Advocacy Hurt the Credibility of Scientists? Results from a Randomized National Survey Experiment

ABSTRACT It is often assumed that issue advocacy will compromise the credibility of scientists. We conducted a randomized controlled experiment to test public reactions to six different advocacy statements made by a scientist—ranging from a purely informational statement to an endorsement of specific policies. We found that perceived credibility of the communicating scientist was uniformly high in five of the six message conditions, suffering only when he advocated for a specific policy—building more nuclear power plants (although credibility did not suffer when advocating for a different specific policy—carbon dioxide limits at power plants). We also found no significant differences in trust in the broader climate science community between the six message conditions. Our results suggest that climate scientists who wish to engage in certain forms of advocacy have considerable latitude to do so without risking harm to their credibility, or the credibility of the scientific community.

Meteorologists' Views About Global Warming: A Survey of American Meteorological Society Professional Members

Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. However, members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic. In response, AMS created the Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication to explore and, to the extent possible, resolve these tensions. To support this committee, in January 2012 we surveyed all AMS members with known e-mail addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate (n = 1,854). In this paper we tested four hypotheses—1) perceived conflict about global warming will be negatively associated, and 2) climate expertise, 3) liberal political ideology, and 4) perceived scientific consensus will be positively associated—with 1) higher personal certainty that global warming is happening, 2) viewing the global warming observed over the past 150 years as mostly ...

Justify your alpha

In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to P ≤ 0.005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level.

If They Like You, They Learn from You: How a Brief Weathercaster-Delivered Climate Education Segment Is Moderated by Viewer Evaluations of the Weathercaster

AbstractLocal television (TV) weathercasters are a potentially promising source of climate education, in that weather is the primary reason viewers watch local TV news, large segments of the public trust TV weathercasters as a source of information about global warming, and extreme weather events are increasingly common (Leiserowitz et al.; U.S. Global Change Research Program). In an online experiment conducted in two South Carolina cities (Greenville, n = 394; Columbia, n = 352) during and immediately after a summer heat wave, the effects on global warming risk perceptions were examined following exposure to a TV weathercast in which a weathercaster explained the heat wave as a local manifestation of global warming versus exposure to a 72-h forecast of extreme heat. No main effect of the global warming video on learning was found. However, a significant interaction effect was found: subjects who evaluated the TV weathercaster more positively were positively influenced by the global warming video, and vie...

Bridging the Research-Practice Gap in Climate Communication Lessons From One Academic-Practitioner Collaboration

Recent evidence suggests that a research-practice gap exists for climate change communication, whereby practitioners are not making optimal use of knowledge that exists and scholars are not answering questions most relevant to practitioners. Closer collaboration between academics and practitioners is one way to close this gap. We recount our collaboration with a group of Sierra Club staff and volunteers working to improve their climate advocacy and organizing activities. From our collaboration, four ways of improving future collaborations emerged, relating to broad versus narrow applicability of communication recommendations, strategy versus tactics, academic versus experiential knowledge, and proactive versus reactive support.

Predictors of trust in the general science and climate science research of US federal agencies

In this article, we focus on a key strategic objective of scientific organizations: maintaining the trust of the public. Using data from a nationally representative survey of American adults (n = 1510), we assess the extent to which demographic factors and political ideology are associated with citizens’ trust in general science and climate science research conducted by US federal agencies. Finally, we test whether priming individuals to first consider agencies’ general science research influences trust in their climate science research, and vice versa. We found that federal agencies’ general science research is more trusted than their climate science research—although a large minority of respondents did not have an opinion—and that political ideology has a strong influence on public trust in federal scientific research. We also found that priming participants to consider general scientific research does not increase trust in climate scientific research. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Spreading Success Beyond the Laboratory: Applying the RE-AIM Framework for Effective Environmental Communication Interventions at Scale

The RE-AIM framework, created by Russell Glasgow and colleagues, addresses five major factors involved with sustained population-level effectiveness of public health interventions – Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance. In this article, I illustrate how the framework might be applied to the context of an environmental communication intervention, and discuss how the framework needs to be adapted to important differences between this context and the context of public health interventions. Following that, I discuss how research practices of environmental communication scholars should be changed in light of the insights given by the RE-AIM framework. Finally, I address several criticisms that might be raised by those who are skeptical that using the RE-AIM framework for environmental communication studies will be worth the effort. I conclude that all scholars interested in the applied side of environmental communication should change their perspective and research practices based on the RE-AIM framework.

Conflict about Climate Change at the American Meteorological Society: Meteorologists’ Views on a Scientific and Organizational Controversy

AbstractThis article analyzes open-ended survey responses to understand how members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) perceive conflict within the AMS over global warming. Of all survey respondents, 53% agreed that there was conflict within the AMS; of these individuals who perceived conflict, 62% saw it as having at least some productive aspects, and 53% saw at least some unproductive aspects. Among members who saw a productive side to the conflict, most agreed as to why it was productive: debate and diverse perspectives enhance science. However, among members who saw an unproductive side, there was considerable disagreement as to why. Members who are convinced of largely human-caused climate change expressed that debate over global warming sends an unclear message to the public. Conversely, members who are unconvinced of human-caused climate change often felt that their peers were closed-minded and suppressing unpopular views. These two groups converged, however, on one point: politics was se...