General Discussion

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

Just a note guys, I noticed people suggesting questions about government policy concerning the environment and people's opinions on how government policy affects climate change but we should steer clear of questions like that as there is a whole separate questionnaire concerning government and the environment.