An Experimental Examination of Measurement Disparities in Public Climate Change Beliefs

Abstract

The extent to which Americans -- especially Republicans -- believe in anthropogenic climate change has recently been the subject of high profile academic and popular disagreement. We offer a novel framework, and experimental data, for making sense of this debate. Using a large (N = 7,019) and demographically diverse sample of US adults, we compared several widely-used methods for measuring belief in anthropogenic climate change. We find that seemingly-trivial decisions made when constructing questions can, in some cases, significantly alter the proportion of the American public who appear to believe in human-caused climate change. Critically, we find that some common measurement practices may nearly double estimates of Republicans' acceptance of human-caused climate change. We conclude by discussing the implications of this work for the consumption, production, and communication of research on climate opinion.

Keywords: climate change, public opinion, survey artifact, survey measurement