About the event
Scholars lack a clear and comprehensive understanding of how people around the world think about climate change. A large literature has explored the development of public opinion about climate change in the U.S. and the E.U. based on long-running social surveys, but data from the rest of the world remains sparse. Recent advances in survey data processing techniques allow us to combine distinct survey data series into a single measure that reflects a comparable construct in different times and places. Specifically, we adapt an item-response theory model to provide the most comprehensive estimates to data of public concern about climate change around the world. These estimates unlock a range of analyses into the drivers of climate concern at finer geographic and temporal scales than were previously possible. The exercise highlights the sparseness of survey data availability for some of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, however. To give voice to these populations, we evaluate whether Facebook advertising can be used to cost-effectively generate representative survey samples in the Global South. We use the Total Survey Error framework to define the distinct sources of error that threaten the external validity of conclusions derived from Facebook-based surveys. We evaluate representativeness along two different respondent dimensions --- demographics and opinions --- and we describe some of the practical considerations involved in Facebook sampling. Together, these papers unlock many avenues to advance understanding of how individuals in the Global South think about climate change and other pressing policy issues.
About the speaker
Dr. Parrish Bergquist is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. She studies environmental policy and politics in the United States, with a focus on public opinion and political behavior. Her research examines the development and implications of public attitudes about environmental protection, energy, and climate change; the implications of partisan polarization and nationalization for environmental policy outcomes; and how political actors and members of the public perceive, portray, and evaluate political issues, problems, and proposals. At the McCourt School of Public Policy, she teach courses in environmental policy and statistics.