Course talk:POLI380JAN2011Owen/Survey/Environment--Citizens' sustainability choices

I tried to gather the main questions to see what is already agreed upon and what is missing. We don't have a third question => we need another question.

Question 5 needs to be discussed.

Q1 COST "How important is cost in your decision to make choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable

Q2 OPINION ABOUT IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS Individual efforts, including recycling, composting, biking, and using public transit, make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change? (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

Q3

Q4 BELIEF ABOUT THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON CANADA Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years d)0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment e)Not Applicable - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.

Q5 SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES Which of the following sustainable practices do you do on a regular basis: -recycle -use reusable food/beverage containers -use reusable bags -compost -take public or alternative modes of transportation -buy local products -use energy-efficient lighting and/or appliances 1 of the above, 2 of the above, 3 of the above, 4 of the above, 5 of the above, 6 of the above, 7 of the above.

First, as we already have questions about beliefs and opinions, I would suggest that we add a question about practices. Secondly, I think that for the final version we should change the order of the questions. I would not start by asking a question about the cost because it would give the impression that it is the main focus and people maybe won't feel very comfortable with it at first. So I would start with a general and opinion question like Q2, then maybe Q5 as it is directly related. Then Q1, because it could be one of the reason why they don't act in a sustainable and it would nicely follow Q2 and Q5. Then Q4 is kind of another topic so I'll put it after and maybe we should find another question about climate change that include practices so that it gives us more details about climate change.

I agree with Caroline! I think we should put Q2 first, followed by Q5 and then the more detailed questions. I was thinking maybe we could include a question about how much time the individuals spend researching/talking about sustainability issues? I guess it could be an interesting way to find out the gap between how much information they are getting and how they are actually making sustainable choices (asked in Q5)

Fantastic work Caroline and Naomi. I think we have a great list. You left question 3 open, and I think the question I posed on the governments role would fit nicely because it counters the question on the individuals role. I am not sure how others feel about this?

Perhaps the order could be 2 followed by 5, and then 1, after which is the governments role question and then finally question 4. (2,5,1,3, and 4)

Thanks for putting up this draft caroline, it has made it alot easier to see how the questionnaire is going. I agree that Q2 should be first, followed by 5 and so on, depending on the outcome of question 3.

I also really like Naomi's idea of letting question 3 gauge the amount of time spent educating yourself over sustainability issues, and this could include finding out about the correlation between media coverage and sustainability that I suggested earlier.

Questions look great. I agree with Aarondeep about the Govt vs. Individual. I'm just concerned about the phrasing at this stage. Also after rereading Q1 a couple of times, I find it sounds a little awkward, wordy or perhaps redundant - "your decision to make choices" ... It may just be me, but maybe we could rephrase it to- How important is cost in making choices that reduce your impact on the environment?

I think the simpler wording that Jes suggests is better. After rereading question 1 several times, I realised it more elongated than it needs to be.

In defining "costs" are we just defining it in terms of monetary value or is it more of a broad statement that can also encompasses time, etc.? I think that we should put into brackets what we mean by costs since I'm sure money is not the only reason why people do not choose more sustainable choices.

So for example: "How much do you factor in cost(time,money,access)when deciding to make choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" 1)a lot 2) somewhat 3)not at all

The order of the questions does need changing: 2, 5, 1, 3, 4.

Q1 should be reworded to be more concise. As for "cost", it's supposed to refer to monetary cost. If you want to include some more elaboration into it as it's done in Q2, that should be fine.

Q5 should be changed from "on a regular basis" to "on a weekly basis" (based on discussion from the relevant thread).

Also, shouldn't all of the questions include an option (6) for "Not Applicable"?

I think Q3 should be some form of the information question Naomi suggested. It would be helpful to gauge people's level of understanding/information on environmental issues. Again using a scale would most likely be the best gauge. Good stuff guys!

I think Q3 should be some form of the information question Naomi suggested. It would be helpful to gauge people's level of understanding/information on environmental issues. Again using a scale would most likely be the best gauge. Good stuff guys!

Hey guys, if we are going to make Q3 about an individuals level of information, I think we need to decide if the question will be one of two ways. the first being something along the lines of "How informed do you consider yourself on environmental issues? 1) Well informed, 2) somewhat informed, 3) not very informed, 4) not at all." or we could ask it in another way, such as, "How much time do you spend reading (researching?) environmental issues (per week maybe?): the answer scale we would have to figure out, possibly 1)10+ hours, 2)7-10 hours, 3) 4-7 hours, 4)1-3 hours, 5) less than one hour, 6) none.

I guess these are two ways of trying to get the same information. I think the second question would allow us more information to analyze and give a more accurate depiction of the relationship between hours spend educating oneself vs. the first question which simply asks them to tell us how educated they feel they are. The second one is more concise, I feel and it leaves less room for self-interpretation which the first question is very open to.

Is there anyway we could do a follow up question for question three? So if we ask the first question that Michael wrote in terms of how informed each individual feels they are, we could do a follow up question for those who answered that they are well or somewhat informed. This way we could try to find a correlation between how informed they actually are and how much they are actively pursuing to keep themselves informed. This would be another for us to measure to what degree they care about staying actively involved, which should dictate their likeliness of making more or less sustainable choices.

I think Shannon asked the TA last week, and he said that follow-up questions count as 2 questions. Can anyone else verify this? Otherwise, the follow-up question strategy would be great and would work really well with a research question on education/awareness and sustainability choices.

My TA definitely said that follow-up questions count as 2 questions, not 1 2-part question. Sorry.

@ Michael, yes I agree that the second question gives a more objective analysis of the individual's awareness since everyone has different standards of how informed is "well-informed"! @ Ariel, I think Q5 asks how much the individual contributes to making sustainability choices so we could connect Q3 and Q5 :)

Hey guys, I am slightly worried about adding new questions at this stage. Lets try to fix and quirk the ones we have so that we have five efficient and strong questions by tomorrow.

I think measuring how well informed a person thinks they are is a good idea. Needless to say people will have differing opinions on what constitutes as being informed, but regardless their answer will reflect their self perception of awareness. Also I think that this question would fit in well as the first one asked because if a person feels they are unaware of issues they can answer at the start and their answers will reflect this opinion (hopefully).

However, this said it might have the opposite effect, with people giving an answer of being well informed, and so the rest of the answers they give try and reflect there first choice, regardless of the reality. Therefore it might best be asked near the end of the survey.

Final draft of question- version 2

So this thread is getting increasingly difficult to navigate, I'll try to include as many as the revisions as possible. I am going to change Q5 to an answer scale in ranges rather than having 7 options.

Q2 OPINION ABOUT IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS Individual efforts, including recycling, composting, biking, and using public transit, make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change? (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

Q5 SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES Which of the following sustainable practices do you do on a weekly basis: -recycle -use reusable food/beverage containers -use reusable bags -compost -take public or alternative modes of transportation -buy local products -use energy-efficient lighting and/or appliances (1)1-2 of the above (2)3-4 of the above (3) 5 or more of the above (4) not applicable .

Q1 COST "How important is cost in making choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable

Q3 SUGGESTED QUESTION FOR NUMBER 3"How much time do you spend learning about environmental issues per month: 1)10+ hours, 2)7-10 hours, 3) 4-7 hours, 4)1-3 hours, 5) less than one hour, 6) none.

Q4 BELIEF ABOUT THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON CANADA Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years d)0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment e)Not Applicable - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.

I am also going to suggest that for Q4 we change the question to:

Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment _____

(1)during my lifetime (2)after my lifetime (3)not applicable - climate change is HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment (4)not applicable - climate change will not have a noticeable affect on Canada's environment

or something along these lines, just so we don't have such arbitrary time frames.

These questions are a good final draft!

I think leaving Question 4 as it is may be best because we're trying to gauge how people think climate change will impact the environment over time. By switching it to "during, after...my life time" we're letting the participants decide what they feel is an adequate measure. Since we're not measuring the participant's ages in this survey, it may be hard to account for their perceptions of "lifetime" as a quantifiable #.

I completely understand where you are coming from with your critique of "during, after... my life time," my thought process, however, was that this measure would allow us to assess if the individual believed climate change was an issue that would impact their lives, or if they believed in it but still viewed it as a distant issue not relevant to their lives. I just think the year scale in question 4 is a little arbitrary and the results might now be that relevant. I think the age of the individuals is irrelevant as we are not measuring a time frame as much as we would be measuring direct impact on their lives.

I think we should leave Q4 as it was with the answers as years (e.g. 20 years).

It gives us more concise figures to work with as the idea of 'lifetime'is so much more subjective... (think about the perception of 'lifetimes'in perhaps the 'developing' world vs. developed world, or rural. vs urban... etc., etc., etc. ) At the end of the day, I think if you really did want to measure lifetime, you can go into the data set and work with the individual responses by looking at the age of the responsdents and their answers. If they answer that they think climate change will affect them in 20 and/or maybe 50 years.. you can assume they think it will change in their lifettime. Furthermore, if someone replies in the next 100 years, I think it's safe to say that they don't they will be affected.

The draft looks good Shannon! My only concern is that question 3 seems a bit too vague. Maybe we could rephrase the question to something like "How many hours per week do you spend reading/watching news on sustainability issues"?

I agree with the comment above. I think Q3 phrasing is slightly inappropriate, because I do not know many people who actively sit down to research environmental issues on a weekly basis. Naomi's suggestion offers a more realistic alternative, and one which will not exclude the majority in answering.

Other than that I think the survey has shaped up well.

I also agree with both Anna and Naomi. The word "learning" needs to be changed because it seems to have too formal of a connotation and may not account for the other forms that individuals take in information about environmental issues. More informal ways of learning such as reading posters of facts around campus or holding events or promotions may be another way people "learn" about these issues.

So I definitely vote for it to be changed to what Naomi wrote over the original..

"How many hours per week do you spend reading/watching/engaging yourself with sustainability issues"?

I just took out news and added engaging yourself. Just an option..

okay, so with 1 hr left, here's the 'final' draft of what we have so far:

---

Q1. OPINION ABOUT IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS "Individual efforts, including recycling, composting, biking, and using public transit, make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change?" (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

Q2. SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES "Which of the following sustainable practices do you do on a weekly basis: -recycle -use reusable food/beverage containers -use reusable bags -compost -take public or alternative modes of transportation -buy local products -use energy-efficient lighting and/or appliances (1)1-2 of the above (2)3-4 of the above (3) 5 or more of the above (4) not applicable .

Q3. COST "How important is cost in making choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable

Q4. SUGGESTED QUESTION FOR NUMBER 3"How many hours per week do you spend reading/watching news on sustainability issues?: 1)10+ hours, 2)7-10 hours, 3) 4-7 hours, 4)1-3 hours, 5) less than one hour, 6) none.

Q5. BELIEF ABOUT THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON CANADA Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years d)0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment e)Not Applicable - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.

---

The question order has been updated and a slight revision has been made to Q4, but on all other questions, I would say there's been a reasonable consensus. Of course, no survey question can be perfect, but these seem good nevertheless.

Hey guys! I was just wondering, are the questions on the main page(the page under the 'Course' tab) the final draft? I think for Q4, we should eliminate the word 'engaging in sustainability issues' since we're strictly dealing with how much information the individual is receiving and the word 'engaging' produces ambiguity and the respondents might think the question is asking about their participation in sustainability issues (like those we ask in Q5)!

Which of the following sustainable practices do you do on a regular basis: -recycle -use reusable food/beverage containers -use reusable bags -compost -take public or alternative modes of transportation -buy local products -use energy-efficient lighting and/or appliances

1 of the above, 2 of the above, 3 of the above, 4 of the above, 5 of the above, 6 of the above, 7 of the above.

• • • I just threw this question up here because we've discussed asking people not only about their sustainability beliefs but also about their actual practices or their actions. I do feel this question needs work and perhaps some rephrasing as I'm not sure how reliable the answers we get will be or even how reliable it is to depend on people self-reporting... I thought of using a question where you could 'check all that apply' but I think that will be more difficult to enter as binary data (if you take into account all the possible combinations possible...). Any ideas on how to make this better?

if we were to use a question such as this maybe the options should be put into ranges, 1)none of the above 2)1-3 3)4-6 4)all of the above

Perhaps the question could be phrased:

How many of the following sustainable practices do you do on a regular basis? (list the practices)

One of my concerns with this question is that people's differing opinions of "a regular basis." Another issue is the list of practices we choose to include, we may not include several key sustainable practices that people practice. It really depends on what we are trying to measure with this question, is it simply do people recycle? do people buy local? or is it how sustainable are people's behaviors? etc.

I think the range idea is very good, as is the theory behind the question. We could phrase the question differently however, to avoid the 'regular basis' queries you raised ShannonLee, by giving a time frame e.g

How many of the following sustainable practises do you partake in on a weekly/fortnightly/monthly basis? We could pick the time scale in which we wish to measure, depending on what is considered most appropriate.

i think weekly would be a good measure to relatively capture "regular" activity.

Agreed. I also think it would be prudent to define alternative modes of transportation in case that term causes some confusion. Maybe listing some examples, such as biking, skateboarding, rollerblading, etc., would be the simplest way to do that.

I really like the question but lets make sure that we are not leaving out any practices that people may be doing and are not there. Thus someone could be using sustainable soaps, fertilizer etc and answer no when they are still practicing sustainable choices.

I like the direction of this question but I would suggest that we remove the part about buying local products. There is a lot of debate about this and I think one of the strongest arguments is that the best way to be sustainable is to buy food from regions where it grows best as it means the least amount of energy is used to produce the food. Sometimes the energy or agriculture-related emissions used to produce food locally is equivalent or more than the emissions used to transport it. This can also be applicable to to other products.

Instead of making this a multiple choice question, why don't we ask the respondents to place a check mark next to all the activities that they participate in? This way we don't have to include ranges in our answer options! Just a suggestion :)

We could measure something like this with categories like: "in the next 20 years" "in the next 40 years" "in the next 60 years" "in the next 80 years" "in the next 100 year." I know that this does not capture people who do not think climate change is an issue, now or in the future. Any suggestions?

This is seems a bit too open to interpretation and may be difficult to phrase in a question. What exactly are you trying to ask? ie what answer would you like to hear?

I agree that this is vague in terms of survey questions. "An affect" could mean many things.

I do think a question along these lines would be good for measuring how many people think climate change is an impending threat or something that will not result in any impact for a very long time. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to word a successful question evaluating this feeling in participants. Maybe instead of "an affect" we could say "a noticeable affect"

I think we should limit it to either Vancouver or Canada instead of Canada/Vancouver. After all, there are those may feel that environmental changes will have an ____ effect on Vancouver but another ____ effect on Canada.

So...how about

Climate change will have a lasting effect on Canada's environment in the next 20 years. (1) Strongly Agree (2) Somewhat Agree (3) Neutral (4) Somewhat Disagree (5) Strongly Disagree (6) Not Applicable

Yes I agree with the question above, it is very concise and I too see a problems if we fail to separate Canada and Vancouver. I also think that it could be measured on a 1-5 scale, asking;

To what extent do you believe climate change will have a lasting effect on Canada's environment in the next 20 years? 1 = little effect, through to 5 = devastating permanent effect.

Through this means of measurement you gain perspective into the extent of how bad the population believes the effects of climate change will be rather than a general perception of the lasting effects.

Sorry for the confusion, but I had put up Vancouver/Canada as a way of asking which you all thought we should ask about. I never intended it to be both, just one or the other. I think that NielChah's question is pretty good, but 20 seems kind of arbitrary. I was just wondering why you picked that over some other number. As long as we are going to pick a definite time I think it should be a little bit farther into the future than 20 years. If we used 40 or 50 years, for example, we would be better able to analyze how ideas about what will happen far in the future affect the decisions we take today.

Ah, thanks for explaining that Benjamin, I didn't realize from the phrasing of the sentence :) As for 20 years, it was my arbitrary phrasing of the question to get it off the ground, so to say. Yes, I think asking 50 years into the future is just as useful and important for gauging the "future".

What if we phrased it like this - Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years e)0 years - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment d) 0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment. That way we can still gauge as Benjamin Black suggested perceptions about climate change/future. I feel that if our answers are e.g. 1=little effect through 5=devastating permanent effect as Anna suggested, they will not be as reliable and they will be harder to read/analyze since they are very open to different interpretations ('devastating permanent effects' will probably be very different for different people). Otherwise I think Niel's question: Climate change will have a lasting effect on Canada's environment in the next 20 years. (1) Strongly Agree (2) Somewhat Agree (3) Neutral (4) Somewhat Disagree (5) Strongly Disagree (6) Not Applicable is probably more concise and easier to answer. I would change the 20years to 50 years though.

I am a big fan of the question raised by Jes, the question allows us to interpret how pressing of a matter climate change is. The other questions would be much harder to interpret. Perhaps instead of listing 0 years, we could list not applicable, as climate change will not have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.

The question and comment rased by Shannon gets to the crux of the matter. Ones perception of future climate change impacts. I am worried that 'Canada' is quite broad and will be very difficult for the surveyee to respond to easily and giving years may require some expert/education on the matter. I personally believe climate change will have an affect but would not comfortable estimating when?

We could rephrase it to be driven towards an individual.

What kind of effect to do you think climate change will have on your life in the next ___ years? and maybe put a intro phrase in first like: Climate change has brought effects of temperature increases, pollution, soil erosion, arable land availabilty and many others to Canada and this phenomena is believed to be increasing...what kind of effect...

and a 1-5 scale of Strong Affect Somewhat Affect Neutral Little Affect No Affect

Option A: Climate change will have a lasting effect on Canada's environment in the next 50 years. (1) Strongly Agree (2) Somewhat Agree (3) Neutral (4) Somewhat Disagree (5) Strongly Disagree (6) Not Applicable

Option B: Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years d)0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment e)Not Applicable - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.

Or as AarondeepBains mentions, Option C: Climate change has brought effects of temperature increases, pollution, soil erosion, [decreases in] arable land availability and many others to Canada, and this phenomena is believed to be increasing. What kind of effect do you think climate change will have on your life in the next [50] years? a)Strong Effect b)Some Effect c)Neutral d)Little Effect e) No Effect f) Not Applicable

Put side by side, Option B seems to be a better measure of how much of an impact environmental changes will have, by putting the survey question choices into # of years. Option A does have the flaw of arbitrarily deciding on '20' or '50' years as the tipping point. The third question asks something a bit different from the first two. It runs into the same 'problem' of picking a certain # of years as the tipping point [I put in 50 years for now. If it were to be left blank, then that would mean the Question would be affected in 2 ways: "what kind of effect" and "# of years"].

I choose to support Option B as the Q4.

I also support option B. Option A would be hard to interpret the results, and option C leaves too much open to interpretation. What some may describe as some effect others may define as neutral or strong.

Another vote for Option B. I just think we need to make sure that not all of our final questions reference climate change as a gauge for sustainability impacts

This question is a good one! Since we will be testing the question on canadian citizens, more specifically british columbia residents, it would allow us to see how the proximity of an environmental problem influences citizen opinion and the actions they will take in return. But my one concern is, because we will be using this survey on UBC students, there are lots of international students here that are not Canadian, so we would need to control this "Z variable" of international students, unless we actually want to compare the opinions of canadians and foreigners.

I'm all for option B. I was under the impression that we were going to be able to ask anyone in Vancouver. If that is the case it would be easy enough to go downtown and just screen out people who are not Canadian by asking.

Ok sorry but I am very confused about this question. What are we trying to gauge here? When people think climate change will effect them or their region? or How large a possible impact on them will be? - This is a super case sensitive question where answers will be very varied and could pose difficulty in the analysis of data post survey. If we want to understand how people feel about climate change, its timeline and perhaps the region they live in then we should have potential uses for such data in mind. 25 or 50 seems very arbitrary to an individual who may have little to know experience in climate change literature etc. Perhaps something along this line:

Do you believe climate change will personally affect your life choices (such as consumption choices, fuel type etc. - whatever we like here) in the next ___ years (I personally feel that anything more than 20 years is too much to logically gauge in ones life, so 10 or 15 should be good)? and even adding an intro sentence such as Climate change has had pronounced international effects with rising temperatures, increases (yes increases, not decreases, error above) in arable land and climate pattern changes. Do you believe...

What do you guys think?

I think that Aarondeep Bains is right to say that the initially formulated question is too vague. We don't really know what it is measuring as it sounds like a statement that is neither positive or negative. I think Aaron's version could be a nice alternative. I would say that if we want to know it the person will feel personally concerned about climate change it should not be more than 30 years because after that they would probably care less or case only indirectly for their kids. However, I think that by adding the sentence("Climate change has had pronounced..." ) we are influencing too much the answer because we are actually saying: everyone says it has some effect, do you think it will affect you ? Which I think it's too biased in favor of the yes.

What about rephrasing it in order to have a scale (from 1 to 5 or something similar)? I always feel that people would never say no because it's too extreme, but they might say, "somehow".

My understanding of the question was that it is gauging people's actual belief in climate change- Do they think it currently has an impact or will have an impact. This question does leave out people who think climate change is a hoax and will never have an impact because it is untrue- yes they do exist! Additionally, it gauges their understanding as to the progression of climate change- will the ramifications of their actions be felt during their life time or will the impacts only appear after they are gone?

Reading it from a different perspective that comments have brought up I understand how it could also be viewed as a question of how environmental practices impact a specific region such as Canada or Vancouver since that is the region mentioned. If that was the intention of the questions it definitely needs to be re-worded.

My only concern is how possible it is for someone to gauge the impact of climate change in such an unforseeable future (50 years !!!). We have to give people a possibility to answer logically. Caroline you are right about the bias. Perhaps it could be reworded so that we simply say that: there is a great degree of debate regarding the impact of future climate change...do you believe...?

Q1. "Is cost a factor in your decision to make sustainable choices?" (1)Yes (2)No

Concerning this question I am worried about the fact that "a factor" is to vague and does not measure how important is the factor in question. i.e we won't know if cost influences a little bit or a lot their decision. Therefore I suggest that we change it for

In which proportion does cost influence your decision to make sustainable choices? OR

How would you measure the influence of the cost on your decision to make sustainable choices on a scale from 1 to 5 (or 3 or 4 etc)

and then we should find a nice way for different answers (which I haven't found) and we can decide if we define 1 to 5 with numbers or with words, like 1 = cost is the only factor that influences my decision, 2= cost is one but not the major factor that influences my decision, 3= cost is a minor factor 4=i don't consider the cost when taking such a decision

or something like that but better said!!!

Yes, the question is good, but the measure may not be detailed enough. Since its currently a binary measure, it may tend to sort out the survey participants into neat groups of "cost-conscious" and "not-cost-conscious".

I think gathering data using a 1-5 point scale would be better. If a Y/N measure turns out to be necessary, it may still be possible to convert a 1-5 scale to a binary scale (i.e. values 1-2 = Yes, 4-5 = No...)

So adding to CarolineJankech's idea:

(1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important

...which would also mean we would have to change Q1 into something like "How important is cost in your decision to make sustainable choices?"

I am worried about the words "sustainable choices." There is a lot of misinterpretation of the term within the general public which could skew our survey results. For example one person might think that recycling is a sustainable choice when it is not (the things you recycle cannot be 100% used again). In this case I think it would be better to change "sustainable choices" to something like "choices that reduce your impact on the environment."

Could we for example start the section of the survey by giving a definition of what sustainable choices are? Then we would ask the people to answer the questions considering our definition... I don't know if it is possible!

I agree with CarolineJankech and NielChah idea about the way to structure the question.If we want to measure the relationship between cost and sustainabilty influences, it is good to structure the answer like NielChan put it(1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important. In a way, it is good to ask opinion related questions because we want to know the personal feelings of the citizens on sustainalibity. But if we are going to ask questions about cost and its relation to sustainalibility, it needs to be combined with questions that would also measure individual opinions on quantative matters. For example, if we want to measure how cost effects sustanability, perhaps we can ask: would you prefer to buy an expensive type of food that is sustainable in relation a cheaper one that is not? Answer: yes or no.

What exactly are we measuring here? - we want to know if price influences a persons food purchasing choices related to sustainable products. So even if we know how important price is, it may be simpler for the person to simply say that they do our do not buy food that is sustainable if it is too expensive. Thus perhaps this is better:

Do you avoid purchasing sustainable food products because of their price difference from non-sustainable products even if you prefer the sustainable choice?

Yes or No

My question is a bit confusing, can someone help to simplify it?

Neil and Caroline, you two are right on the ball with regards to the ability to convert the answer to binary after the fact. Disregard my last two comments. I still think that we need to make questions with potential answers that give us data usuable to determine individual sustainable choice preferences.

How about this: How important is price in deciding to purchase sustainable products?

Important Somewhat important Neutral Somewhat not important Not Important AND Not applicable

The not applicable gives us a category which shows who does not buy sustainable food. This divides the population and then tells us how important it is to people deciding to make sustainable choices. - Do people who want to make sustainable choices not due to cost (this divides them from those who simply do not make sustainable choices).

I am not sure if this makes sense but I think that 'sustainable choices' could be specified simply because there is an enormous difference between locally grown grapes and sustainable windows or thermo heating for homes.

I think the idea of providing a scale for answers is the best way to go and I think Aasrondeep Bains suggestions of including Not applicable is greats as it factors those who choose not to opt for sustainable choices.

Staying away from incorporating food in the question is very important, in my opinion, especially since there are so many sustainable choices that do not include food but still cost money- ie passive solar design for homes, triple glazed windows, transportation options

The base of what I want to know (and hopefully what everyone else is aiming for) from this question is how money impacts people's ability/motivation to make sustainable choices so I think we need to keep the wording simple. I think something along the lines of the original questions with a answer scale would be great

Yes, good observation on including a missing-value for people to choose! That could be something to keep in mind for our other survey questions as well. Also, yes it is important to define what a "sustainable choice" in fact is. I'm sorry if I missed an idea that someone mentioned above. How is your guys' approval for this question then?

Q1. "Is cost a factor in your decision to make choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable (coded as a "missing-value")

Niel Chah, the last question your suggested is very well phrased, i was going to mention that we should include a not applicable option, so I am glad that you have done so. This could definitely be a final draft of this question.

Q1. "How important is cost in your decision to make choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable

I just realized that the phrasing of the question was a bit off.

I think the final way that Niel posed this question is right on the mark. Although, reading it again, I think we need to make the wording a little better. I think it was brought up earlier that saying something along the lines of "...decision to make choices..." makes things complicated. "How important is cost when making choices that reduce your impact on the environment?"

maybe that is too simple, but I think you get my idea.

Hey guys! I already commented on Caroline's thread below, but I wanted to start a new thread to see what you guys think of a question I came up with. I was thinking maybe we could include a question asking how much information regarding sustainability issues the individual gets. I think that this question combined with Q5 can provide an insight into the relationship between the amount of information received(awareness of the issue) and the amount of contribution or sustainable choices made (participation). I guess the question can be something like: "How much time do you spend per week reading/watching/discussing the news on environment issues: (1)None (2) Less than 2 hrs (3) Between 2-5 hours (4)More than 5 hours ... This is what I came up with but I feel like the question could be improved so please feel free to comment/criticize/add on/etc! =)

Yes, this question could be done. And because it focuses on information dissemination, we could also use this question for the research question to see the impact of education on citizens sustainability choices. This question can be applicable to the few research questions we have introduces thoughout the discussion. Thanks Naomi!

I also agree with Asena and Naomi that a question is needed in order to gauge how much information each individual knows regarding sustainable issues. Changing the behavior of each person starts with educating oneself on environment issues which may in turn result in more sustainable practices. By asking how much time each person spends on staying informed is a great way to evaluate, along with the other four questions, the sustainable practices of each individual.

hey, I just wanted to say sorry, I posted a similar question in an above discussion, without realizing this one was already down here. I agree with the question obviously. Also, I think that the part of the question about "the news" is a bit irrelevant, because there are many other ways of informing yourself about environmental issues. That being said, the question makes great sense, and I think is quite valuable in our ability to create a relationship between time spend informing oneself and the relevant actions then taken (or not taken) by that individual.

I think you are off to a good start with this question. Yet I think there is a big difference between watching/reading environmental news and actively talking about it. I am just speculating here, but I would bet that those who actively discuss environmental issues are more active in trying to live "sustainably" that those who just read about it. If this is the case our results could misrepresent what we are trying to measure through the question.

The 'scientific community' tends to stress the FUTURE impact of global climate change. Additionally the substance of predictions vary widely from study to study, thus there is hardly a single authoritative body which provides people with information about climate change. It seems then that this may be the cause for people having widely varying opinions on what the impact of climate change could or will be. I believe that a strong case could be made for a causal relationship between an individual's opinion on what the effects of climate change will be and the degree to which they live or try to live a 'green' or 'sustainable' lifestyle. We should try to ask questions that explore the correlation between these two variables (opinion and lifestyle).

That sounds like a good start. Seeing as how we're gauging citizens' sustainability choices, a dependent variable could very well be the lifestyle that people choose to live. While the opinions that one holds would be astrong influence on the choices people make, I'm wondering if the range of independent variables should be widened, at least while we're still in this preliminary stage of survey-making. We could possible consider that "convenience", "prices/cost", or other factors may have as much as an influence as "opinion". :)

I think this is a good start. I agree that maybe we should widen the range of independent variables in the beginning until we can reach some form of consensus. Also, I think "convenience" and "costs" should be included as they have a large influence over people who are not entirely sold on the future effects of climate change, but will still make sustainable choices if they are able to save some money in the process. Also, as Benjamin stated, there is no authoritative body of work for climate change, so maybe we should figure out where these people get their information from (generally of course) and see the effect it has on their decision to live sustainably or not. Also, we need to come to a consensus on what we mean by saying "Sustainable". I don't think we can make any questions without first defining this term.

I agree that defining our terms will be very important in this survey, especially if we want to draw conclusions later on about people's attitudes and actions regarding the environment. I don't think we should ask people if they think they live "sustainably" or "green-ly", because everyone's idea of sustainable is different. I think we should ask specific questions about environmental practices, for example "Do you recycle?" "Do you consume locally (GVRD/Fraser Valley) grown produce?" "Do you bus, bike or walk to work/school?" "Do you buy bottled water on a regular basis?" etc. Maybe we can all throw in ideas for questions to ask about people's environmental practices... A second thing is that we may want to simply ask if people believe global climate change is a) a human caused problem and b) an important issue. I think that might be interesting...

This looks like great work everyone. I believe there is a very large body of work on climate change. It is disputed but it is the most highly cited and academically referred to. That is the IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is the UN run institution which releases studies and is connected to the various smaller groups such as the Arctic Council etc. The problem is not with a definitive set of research but rather access to research. Only about five percent of the population on average is informed on global and international matters and regularly reads the international news (a majority of this percentage is usually involved in university education and are commonly students like us). The vast majority of people are not informed on international affairs, of which global warming is a part. The extent to which global warming is becoming localised is a focus we could also take. Veronica you hit the spot with the question types. I was thinking about how to ask people as well, and we could say things like "how much do you recycle a week" (and use amounts etc, half bin, full bin, newspapers etc.), and or does your work recycle, and how much etc. Sustainable is a very difficutl thing to define as people have different opinions as I am sure we fifteen alone have very different definitions of it. Finances cannot be avoided. Let us focus as much as possible and find the essence of the issue in order to configure questions on its various forms. Lots of thinking ahead :).

( Sorry in advance for my english I'm an exchange student) 1. I agree too that the questions should be focused on environmental practices rather than on opinions. I think that the main aspects of what we can consider as sustainability in anyone's everyday life are : food, transport, energy (light/water) as you already mentioned. So let's try to each write 5 questions about it and then we can discuss them. 2. On other question I would find interesting would be : Do you think that environmental issues can be solved by changing individual's behavior? Or something similar to know if the people believe that it is their role to make the change happen or if they are waiting for the government to be responsible for it. I don't know what you think about it? Because if we know that they don't believe a) that is their role to make the change happen, and b) that even if they think it's their role they also believe that it is impossible without further political decisions from the government, it could also be a good indirect indicator of how implicated they are in the issue and why they are acting in a "sustainable" way or not? 3. Concerning the questions I think that they are a few points we should be aware of: - Sometimes people don't do things not because they don't want to but because they are not able to. E.g I want to compost but there are no compost bin in my neighborhood. Or I want to bike but I work in an area that is not accessible with the bike (too far etc.). - If we ask young people they might be still living at their parent's house and not choose how things are done, so we should find a way to avoid those obstacles. - As mentioned by Aaron I think it is very important to find concrete way of measuring the behaviors. For example when we ask about recycling we could give different options (paper, cardboard, cans,etc.) so that they can tick only one or more of them.

Maybe formulating some points or research questions on whether people think subsidies are the way to go or taxes...which would be effective or even encouraged? Maybe we should try to develop a research question first and then discuss this and then move on to the survery portion.

Great job you guys! There are some excellent points made here. To start off then, here are some points I can add:

Possible Research Question: Does education have an influence on the sustainability choices of individuals?

Causal Theory: Citizens who are educated on environmental matters are more sustainable because they have learned what kinds of actions are good for the environment and what kinds of actions are bad.

Our two main concepts: Education (independent variable ) and Sustainalibity (dependent variable)

Our two measurements: For education=what majors people are studying at university (poli sci, forestry, commerce etc…)

                     For sustainability= actions taken by individuals (recycling, composting etc.)

And here is my reasoning as to why we can take the above path: I agree with BenjaminBlack when he says “the 'scientific community' tends to stress the FUTURE impact of global climate change” because his point is linked to the importance of education. Information dissemination plays a very important role in what people know about environmental issues and thus their actions in accordance to it. If we focus our education realm to university students, perhaps we can find a correlation that forestry students are more sustainable than commerce students (no offense to commerce:) ). It also seems like we have automatically defined sustainability as the “actions individuals take”, VeronicaReiss shows good examples of survey questions like (Do you recycle?" "Do you consume locally (GVRD/Fraser Valley) grown produce?" "Do you bus, bike or walk to work/school?") These types of questions would be useful in answering our research question because they would be valid, and validity means how close the measurement is to our concept, and if we want to define sustainability in terms of actions, than spot on. But perhaps we can go more specific and ask “how many times do you recycle, compost etc” just to make the comparison more precise because both a forestry and a commerce student can recycle, but it a forestry student recycles more, than they are obviously more sustainable.

Let me know what you guys think! Thanks and keep up the good work guys!

It would be nice to get people's opinions/guesses on how much they recycle but I think that it is slightly unrealistic. How many of us actually know how many times a day we recycle? Once we start to rely on people's own guesses and judgments about themselves then I think we get into territory that is less reliable. I think that AsenaCansuYildiz raises a good point about needing to being as specific as possible in judging how environmentally conscious people are, especially compared to one another. Maybe we could try to do that by asking more questions about environmentally conscious behaviors and giving respondents a score based on how many of the questions they answer. Or does anyone have any other ideas on how to best measure people's relative 'environmentalness'? I'm just wary of asking people to judge or measure their own behaviors...

Ok guys and gals we are getting a bit lost here. I spoke with Caroline yesterday and we think that the best way is to step back from this and just think for a second. We have FIVE questions. Some preliminary questions that will be done no matter what. Everyone should just sit and think very hard about a research question, or general statement regarding sustainability and individuals, and then try very hard to form a strong theory between two different things (Does gender influence sustainability choices like buying local, organic etc). We can't really think of education because we already know that we will only be asking university students. We need to think long and hard before we continue posting, just step back look at the big picture and let the puzzle pieces come together in the form of a loose theory, then together we can build on that. A thought could may be about the link between childhood experiences and adult choices (having a small backyard garden and being more sustainable in produce choices etc, or living near a farm, or maybe even faculty like stated above etc).

Hey guys, great discussion so far. I agree that we should focus on actions instead of opinions. When I asked the TA about the survey questions, he said that each question could only have one part, as in "Do you recycle?" But we should avoid multi-part question ie. "Do you recycle? If yes, how many times a week?"

As for defining sustainability

Merriam-webster definition:

Definition of SUSTAINABLE

1 capable of being sustained

2a : of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged <sustainable techniques> <sustainable agriculture> b : of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods <sustainable society>

http://www.sustainabilitydictionary.com/

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This definition was created in 1987 at the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission).

it always helps to refer to surveys that have been done in the past. I found this by the National Geographic:

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/greendex/calculator/

Basically, they seem to have used questions that allowed them to rate individuals on an interval scale such as a 1-to-5 point rating system, or a "semantic differential" scale - a fancy name for a how-often-do-you-do-such-and-such scale. Does this perhaps settle the issue of what kind of measure we can use? Now to formulate a theory and some questions?

Perhaps we can ask a question about how important environmental issues are when voting.

For example: To what extend does a candidate's environmental platform influence your vote? and then have some sort of scale such as very applicable, not applicable etc. to measure it.

Hey everyone, in the interest of coming up with our 5 research questions I went through everyone’s posts and consolidated some theories and possible research and survey questions that have been put forward so we can narrow down on what we want to include in our survey.

Theories – causal relationships • causal relationship between an individual's opinion on what the effects of climate change will be and the degree to which they live or try to live a 'green' or 'sustainable' lifestyle. BenjaminBlack • dependent variable could very well be the lifestyle that people choose to live. Independent variables - "convenience", "prices/cost", or other factors may have as much as an influence as "opinion". NielChah • link between childhood experiences and adult choice. Aarondeepbains

Proposed research questions • Does education (faculty) have an influence on the sustainability choices of individuals? AsenaCansuYildiz • Do personal opinions about climate change determine the extent to which people live a “sustainable lifestyle”? – Or are factors such as price and convenience more important? • Does the location where a person is brought up (or live) influence how sustainable of a life they lead?

Survey Questions • To what extend does a candidate's environmental platform influence your vote? ShannonLee • specific questions about environmental practices, for example "Do you recycle?" "Do you consume locally (GVRD/Fraser Valley) grown produce?" "Do you bus, bike or walk to work/school?" "Do you buy bottled water on a regular basis?" etc…. ask if people believe global climate change is a) a human caused problem and b) an important issue. VeronicaReiss • "how much do you recycle a week" and or does your work recycle, and how much etc…. whether people think subsidies are the way to go or taxes...which would be effective or even encouraged?Aarondeepbains • Do you think that environmental issues can be solved by changing individual's behavior? CarolineJankech

It seems like we are all interested in finding if there is a connection between people’s thoughts and actions, and whether other factors (area of study, childhood, etc) influence people’s environmental beliefs and practices. We should keep coming up with research questions and narrow down what we want to look at but it all looks great so far.

@HeatherKelsall, thanks for summarizing all of the discussion that's been going on so far! I'll go ahead and propose a survey question so we can get some headway on that portion of this project:

Q1: "Cost should not be a factor in making sustainable choices." (1) Strongly Agree (2) Somewhat Agree (3) Neutral (4) Somewhat Disagree (5) Strongly Disagree

Critique it, and add some questions of your own. I think some other questions could measure as HeatherLKelsall summarized the connection between people's thoughts (or education, area of study, childhood) and actions.

Yes thank-you so much for summarizing the discussion, it was getting to be all over the place. @NielChah, I really like the concept of the question. Maybe instead of phrasing it as a should/should not question we can ask if it actually is a factor:

"Is cost a factor in your decision to make sustainable choices?" (1)Yes (2)No

I guess I will go ahead and ask a question as well, please critique and edit, the basic premises is whether or not people truly believe that individual efforts make a difference in regards to sustainability and environmental issues.

Q2: "Individual efforts (eg. recycling, composting, biking, using public transit etc.)make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change?" (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

Hey guys,

great stuff on getting concise here. I don't know if I am the only one getting this drift but maybe this idea of what makes one more sustainable has prompted a reverse theory or sorts. I'm not sure if this works, but we could, instead of saying that something prompts sustainable choices say that ones desire to be sustainable does not equate to sustainable choices. Theory: The desire to be sustainable does not equate to sustainable choices. (I don't know if this works or not at all but its an option)

And then look at factors regarding questions:

In your opinion how important is sustainabilty in your daily decision making (recycling, grocery shopping, travelling) - can be asked first or last

Very important, Important etc

How often do you recycle?

Very much, often, little, not often, not at all etc.

If presented with the option of a imported non organic product (considered unsustainble) and a locally grown organic product do you purchase the sustainable option regardless of substantial price differences?

Yes, or No.

Do you have the option to buy sustainable produce (is it located close to you).

these are just some ideas. great work so far :)

I agree with ShannonLee, if we phrase the question Q1 based on their actions rather than as a normative question I think we will get more accurate results about behavior. We could always ask

"Is cost a factor in your decision to make sustainable choices?" (1)Yes (2)No, then ask if cost should be a factor in making sustainable choices. This could lead to questions like Q2 put forth by ShannonLee about whether or not people think individual efforts influence environmental issues, as well as reveal where sustainability sits on individual’s priorities, especially in relation to how much they are willing to spend to be sustainable.

These are some really great questions everyone, but I think we should agree on one research question, so that we can direct our survey questions. I really liked AsenaCansuYildiz's question about the link between education/area of study and environmental practices. So I guess I vote for that one. The one problem I can think of is that it might be hard to prove that what people study affects their environmental practices, and not the other way round. Also, I can imagine a third variable (aka Z) affecting both choices. For example someone who is motivated by money may choose study commerce and also not buy more expensive sustainable products. Anyone have ideas on how to control for this? Or is this even going to be a problem? Anyway, we should agree on one research question.

I think the changes to Q1 are good. Also, AarondeepBains hit it right on with the progression of survey questions I was getting at. With that way, we're attempting to test individuals on the 'beliefs' they have and the subsequent actions they pursue.

As for the research question, I recall in class on Tuesday that Prof. Owen mentioned we could have multiple RQs. Can anyone confirm? If we do in fact decide on one RQ, the questions so far have gravitated towards asking people about their ideas of sustainability and how those translate into actions. Correct me if I'm off on that analysis.

Discussion's going well!

Hi everyone and thanks for your contributions. @ Veronica Reiss and Niel Chah: I confirm that the prof said we could have multiple questions, he even said it was better not to stick to only one. I think we should 2 or 3 depending on how many questions we feel are needed to give us an answer.

I like Q1 and agree with the changes that were made. However, I still think it could be interesting to see if people think it's their role or the role of the government to make the change happen. So I propose :

Q 3 : Do you think that your individual behavior has an impact on the climate change?

Sorry but as I said english is not my first language so feel free to find a better way to say that and please tell me if you think it is useful to ask such a question. I personally think it does because if people don't believe they can have an impact it can tell us a lot about their behavior.

I think we should start writing the questions in the other section of the wiki (under our name where they are supposed to be at the end) so that it is less confusing and we make changes directly there.

Hey everyone, Great discussion so far! Thanks to @HeatherKelsall for doing some organizing.

@NielChah and @VeronicaReiss, I agree with CarolineJankech regarding the research question – I also understood from class that we can work with multiple RQs, so I think we should focus our work more on getting five solid questions. @VeronicaReiss , I agree that in exploring the link between education (faculty) and environmental practices it would be hard to prove which one comes first/ which is the independent variable and which is the independent. I also am not sure the commerce/money tie completely holds true as one could be studying commerce and have a passion for making sure businesses are sustainable.

So far I think it is important we ask about whether or not, cost is a factor in making sustainable choices. I also think we should definitely ask if one actually believes that their individual actions make a difference (poli/econ theory – tragedy of the commons ) like CarolineJankech suggested.

Like CarolineJankech suggested, it’s hard to keep track of edits and discussion for all questions here on this one big thread. I thought it would be easier if we have individual threads, one for each survey question… that way we can work on strengthening individual questions and our comments/edits won’t get lost. We can still discuss broader/more general topics or issues in this main thread. Towards the deadline (I don’t remember when it is) if it isn’t already clear which questions we’re going with, I guess we can all vote in this main thread on which questions to keep. I hope this system works. I started us off by making threads for the last 3 questions that were discussed.

Q1. "Is cost a factor in your decision to make sustainable choices?" (1)Yes (2)No Q2. "Individual efforts (eg. recycling, composting, biking, using public transit etc.) make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change?" (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree Q 3 : Do you think that your individual behavior has an impact on the climate change?

From now on I guess, feel free to start a thread for any new survey questions.

If you guys have any better ideas for organizing our discussion and our questions, or if you feel this new system is not that great, I’m totally open to switching. I hope this helps :)

@JesSimkin Thanks you so much for creating the different threads- everytime I would log on I felt totally overwhelmed by all the discussion. I think the separate format will work wonderfully.

I like the questions so far but I fell that #2 and #3 are quite similar as they both focus on how the individual feels their actions impact climate change.

I think it would be interesting to find out how willing the respondents are to learn more about sustainability. There has been discussion about how your faculty may impact sustainability decisions but what about those who are no longer in university or who are interested in sustainability but chose a completely unrelated field? A question gauging their willingness to learn more in the future could be helpful as we already have a question regarding their current practices.

Hey guys, I apologize for my late contribution to this discussion but I think so far you guys are all making great progress. I understand as a few of you guys said we can have several research questions but as Veronica was saying I also think it is important to have one or two solid questions so that we are all on the same page in terms of how we are framing the questions and what goals we are looking to achieve in our survey. I also think one of the research questions should involve the link between education/area of study and environmental practices. I definitely believe that how much education one has regarding environmental issues is linked to citizens sustainability choices. The more aware one is, the more likely they are to make more sustainable choices in their day to day lives.

We could also make a question regarding how difficult each participant believes it is to make sustainable choices in their day to day lives. I guess that correlates with the question of cost being a factor as written in question one but there are other factors other than cost such as convenience, time, etc that also goes into people's calculations as I believe Caroline mentioned earlier. In order to solve this issue we could define"cost" in terms of the trade-offs that people consider in being more sustainable or in economic terms: opportunity cost. So for example, by taking the bus to school every day, it may be more sustainable but that means that it will take an extra half an hour or so to get to school where as driving their car would take much less time. I may just be rambling but let me know if I am in anyway helping this discussion. I will try to come up with a concrete question soon.

Hi all, I get the feeling that questions one and two are too similar to each other. If we could find a way to combine the two that would probably be the best (because they capture slightly different portions of the same kind of opinion). If that doesn't work out I think we should keep Q2. On a different note, we should really try to get a few more questions out there for discussion. Like I mentioned at the start of the discussion I feel that perceptions on climate change affect what people do in response to it. We should try to get a question that measures individual interpretations of what climate change will look like. Also there is the possibility that climate change will be beneficial to Canada. There are a lot of natural resources up here and warmer climates would help give better access to them. Maybe not all Canadians view climate change as a bad thing, as far as Canada's national interest is concerned...

Hey all, I put another question 5 up there as food for thought. I feel like we've discussed asking people not only about their sustainability beliefs but also about their actual practices or their actions. I do feel question 5 needs work and perhaps some rephrasing as I'm not sure how reliable the answers we get will be or even how reliable it is to depend on people self-reporting... I thought of using a question where you could 'check all that apply' but I think that will be more difficult to enter as binary data (if you take into account all the possible combinations possible...). Any ideas on how to make this better? or if we should even be asking people about their actual sustainable actions?

Here is some of my contribution to possible survey questions we can use in relation to the research question to measure the relationship between education/information dissemination and sustainability.

a. Do you think the major you are studying incorporates learnings on sustainability? 1) Stongly agree 2)Somewhat Agree 3)Neutral 4) Somewhat Disagree 5)Strongly Disagree

b. Would you like to pursue courses or degrees about sustainability? Yes, No Maybe, Don't Know, Does not Apply

c. Why would you not register in courses about sustainability? Please select all that apply.

  *Course was full
  *Was not offered for credit in my discipline
  *Don't know

Okay, so it's been mentioned that questions 2 and 3 are very similar, both attempt to measure how individuals feel their own efforts have an impact on the environment (or climate change). These are some of the ideas that were tossed around:

---

A. Individual efforts (eg. recycling, composting, biking, using public transit etc.) make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change? (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

B. News reports on increased climate change issues or oil deficiencies etc, make me consider altering my lifestyle in order to make it more environmentally friendly and sustainable. (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

C. Do you think that your individual behavior has an impact on the climate change? (or the environment)?

D. IPCC Reports indicate that both individuals and governments are making unsustainable choices with regards to energy consumption methods, food purchasing and even production strategies. How important do you think it is for individuals to make sustainable choices regardless of government policies? 1)Very Important 2)Important 3)Neutral 4)Not Important 5)Not [At All] Important

---

'A' doesn't define what a 'substantial difference' may be and leaves it to the participant to decide. 'B' tries to measure how the media coverage of an environmental issue affects participants' actions/choices. 'C' doesn't define what kind of an 'impact' it would be (a good impact, bad impact?) 'D' has the inclusion of "regardless of government policies", which affects the question. I think the question could work just as well without it.

Comparing all of them, I like what Option A is asking, even if changes need to be made on all of them. :)

Thanks for the comparison Niel. I also prefer Option A. I think it's simple, concise, not too overbearing, and not too confusing. I would also like to work on Option B though and maybe re-phrase it a little.

I agree with A as well. I don't think it is necessary to include "substantial" or even something along those lines. What we want to know is if the individual believes their actions have any impact on the environment so whether or not they believe it has a large impact is irrelevant for this question. If we were to have another questions asking the extent to which they feel they have an impact then it would be different.

To make it more formal though I would not use brackets. Instead use commas.

Individual efforts, including recycling, composting, biking, and using public transit, make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change?

(1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

I think A would be the best option as well since it provides the necessary information without being too confusing!

Q3. Do you think that your individual behavior has an impact on the climate change?

I think this is a good question but my only concern is that we are being too specific in asking if each person believes they have a direct impact on only climate change. If we are discussing environmental issues,it may be important to define what that means and which issues are placed into the category of issues. Climate change may be the most well known out there but that does not mean that it is the only one. If we are looking at citizens sustainability choices, it would be important to somehow figure out the extent to which they know and understand what these environmental issues are. Or if that somehow may be too complicated to figure out we could just change the question to: "Do you believe that your individual behavior has an impact on the most important environmental issues today?"

..or something along those lines, let me know what you guys think.

Yes, agree with the changes to the phrasing of the question. However, if we ask about "the most important environmental issues today" wouldn't that also create confusion as to what we mean by that. Different people may feel different issues are "important". How about "Do you believe that your individual behavior has an impact on the environment?"

Just opening it up for discussion :)

I think this question and question 3 are too similar to warrant separate questions, especially if we only have 5 questions and multiple RQs. I think we should just refine this/both questions and only have one question about what people think about how individual actions affect the environment.

VeronicaReiss, if you meant merging Q2 and Q3, then I think the revised question should incorporate a 1-5 point measurement scale, and perhaps the focus should be generalized to the "environment" and not just climate change? Thoughts?

Also, I think we're able to change the "subject lines" of each mini-discussion we're having. How about whenever we come onto a reasonable consensus that a question be changed, that person can also change the subject line. A minor detail, but it makes the discussion board neater and we can refer to questions easily.

I agree with Veronica. These questions sound too similar, so I think we can revise them intergrate them into one question. Also, we should keep in mind how to measure the "impact" or "differences that individuals make," because answers may become too vague or too broad to be measured.

I really like this question because it can give us some insight into what people think is the solution to unsustainable practices.

Thus we could try something like this:

IPCC Reports indicate that both individuals and governments are making unsustainable choices with regards to energy consumption methods, food purchasing and even production strategies. How important do you think it is for individuals to make sustainable choices regardless of government policies?

Very Important Important Neutral Not Important Not Very Important

How does this sound? I like giving them some information first.

"Do you think that your individual behavior has an impact on the climate change? " question is a really great one because this lets us know right off the start whether a citizen is even interested in the topic of sustainability. So if they answer "no" to this question, and they give answers to the following questions we compose in a way that hints this citizen to be unsustainale, the questions can act as parallel indicators or check point!

As I mentioned earlier in the discussion I think that the idea behind this question is great but is very similar to Q2 and I think that the work that has been made on question 2 make it a better question. I suggest that we keep question 2 and abandon this one.

Q2. "Individual efforts (eg. recycling, composting, biking, using public transit etc.) make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change?"

(1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree

I really like this version of the question, which reflects what I was looking for but I was not able to phrase it. However, it appears to me now that people might find it hard to give only one answer to different kind of actions. For example someone might find it very important to recycle but less to bike etc. But I don't really how to improve this as we have only 5 questions. Therefore I suggest that we keep it but being conscious that the answer will measure more a general faith in individual efforts rather than a precise indicator of what they think is good or not. I guess it is alright as long as we are conscious of that limit.

This question looks very similar to question 3.

What about a question concerning something about individuals habitual changes in relation to media coverage? e.g. Do news reports (independant variable) on increased climate change or oil deficiencies etc, make you consider altering your lifestyle in order to make it more environmentally friendly (dependant variable)?

I know the questions phrasing isn't great, but I think the topic of habits being changed by the media would be interesting.

It can be measured by, 1 = strongly agree, 2= agree, 3= don't know, 4= disagree, 5= strongly disagree, if we change the phrasing to;

News reports on increased climate change issues or oil deficiencies etc, make me consider altering my lifestyle in order to make it more environmentally friendly and sustainable.

I like this question about "Individual efforts (eg. ...) make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change?". It asks about opinion which is always difficult to measure, but the fact that we will also be providing them with options to choose from might limit the difficulty of measuring. So I say thos question can be a keeper!

1. I am concerned about environment and sustainability.

  Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Neutral, Somewhat Disagree, Strongly Disagree
    OR
  Very Concerned, Somewhat Concerned, Neutral, Not Very Concerned, Not Concerned At All

2. I am making significant efforts in my daily routine to reduce climate change (ie. recycling, taking public transit, reducing water/electricity usage)

  Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Neutral, Somewhat Disagree, Strongly Disagree

3. What would you suggest as practical methods to get more people involved in sustainable choice-making in people's lives?

  (Open-ended question)

4. What are some of the actions/efforts you're currently taking to ensure sustainable environment?

  (Open-ended question)

Hey, thanks for your questions. I think that open-ended questions are not recommended for our survey because it is going to be very hard to code them on spss, therefore I would suggest that we stick to close-ended questions.

Since sustainability and especially climate change are very contentious issues I think it would be interesting to include a question gauging the extent to which participants believe the things they hear about the environment.

Possibly something along the lines of:

I feel that the information regarding the environment/climate change provided by experts, such as scientists and the government, can be trusted.

Strongly agree to strongly disagree scale

I'm not too sure if open ended questions are fitting for what we are trying to measure, asking a question like "What would you suggest as practical methods to get more people involved in sustainable choice-making in people's lives?" are useful for measuring opinions, not exactly the sustainability actions individuals take. It would be good to use quantative related questions to make it easier to measure and easier to get conclusions out of.

3. Many provinces are opting for carbon taxes to curb the use of fossil fuels such as petroleum because these sources of energy are unsustainable. Do you believe such taxing policies are effective to make the population make sustainable choices?I think a question like this is important to see the individuals perspective on the governments role. the question could be generalised to How important do you think the governments role is in making sustainable choices for the nation/individuals?We can use a yes or no for the first and or a 1-5 scale for both.

I like the first question very much, and I think that a scale of 1-5 should be used rather than a simple 'yes/no' because it allows for the public perception of taxation as a restraining measure against environmental derogation, to be gauged more accurately. The second question, I feel to be too general, given that some people consider recycling to be the height of sustainability and those more informed will be aware that this is not the case. Again we are faced with the problem of defining sustainability in order to gain accurate information.

I agree with the point above. Maybe we should opt for a question like this: How important do you believe governmental policies, such as carbon taxes, are for encouraging greater sustainability within Canada going forward? I think the scale of 1-5 method would be the best way to measure a question like this. Also should we also ask if it is appropriate for the government to even engage in policies like carbon taxes in the first place? I think we would benefit from also asking a question like that.

I also agree with Anna's opinion. I like how the first question gives some background info to people before they answer the question, so they have general idea behind the question. But a simple Yes/No answer wouldn't be appropriate to provide much insight into the issue. I also think 1-5 scale would be much better.

If we use this one - How important do you believe governmental policies, such as carbon taxes, are for encouraging greater sustainability within Canada going forward?, could we include another example other than carbon taxes? maybe energy efficient education e.g.BC Hydro's PowerSmart or other government rebates/subsidies... I feel that carbon taxes carry a negative connotation - nobody like taxes, and carbon taxes at least in BC (i tihnk) are associated with Gordon Campbell and he's not to popular either.

Asking someone if taxes are good is a biased question. Thats why I decided to phrase it in a manner that some information is given without adding the tax bias. Say the tax, and say what it does. This explanation can act to neutralise the bias and then pose the question after.

I think this would be a great question in regard to questioning if people believe green/sustainability education should be made part of the public school system. Eg.

How important do you believe governmental policies, such as making green education part of school curriculum, are for encouraging greater sustainability within Canada going forward.

or simply,

Should green education be integrated into the public school system's curriculum?