Date of Award

2017-01-01

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Geology

Advisor(s)

Deana D. Pennington

Abstract

Anthropogenic, or human-caused global climate change has been debated for many years among the public despite the growing evidence that there is scientific consensus on this topic. A gap has been discovered between scientific evidence of increasing temperatures and the public's perception on climate change. This gap has been hypothesized to come from the method in which the scientific community represents scientific evidence. The goal of this study was to determine if active learning techniques around local and regional climate change and climate change impacts changes the awareness, perception, and behavioral intentions of different segments of the public. The study used a quantitative component involving online active learning bounded by pre- and post-surveys. A pre-survey was given to all participants, which included questions on their initial awareness, perceptions, and behavioral intentions regarding global climate change. After individuals explored climate data they were prompted to fill out a post-survey, which revealed how these activities had changed their perception on anthropogenic global climate change. Results were consistent throughout in that there was no statistically significant change in the post-activity scores when providing local climate change impacts in the form of a hands-on activity. No statistically significant correlation was found between the independent variables (gender, ethnicity, political view, and education level) and participants' change in concern from the pre- and post-activity results. The study found that although there was no statistically significant change in concern level for participants based on their political views, participants who associated as conservative had a higher increase in level of concern (36.8%), becoming more alarmed, than liberals who became more alarmed (13.3%). In contrast, more liberals had a decrease in concern (33.3%), becoming less alarmed, than conservatives who became less concerned (21.1%). These results indicate that this curriculum (looking at data for themselves) was useful for increasing concern of AGW of conservatives while decreasing concern of liberals. This method of communicating to the public caused individuals to move away from the extremes of their political view.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

73 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Ivy Gisselle Trevizo

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