Two kinds of polar knowledge

Abstract

Outreach and communication with the public have substantial value in polar research, in which studies often find changes of global importance that are happening far out of sight from the majority of people living at lower latitudes. Seeking evidence on the effectiveness of outreach programs, the U.S. National Science Foundation sponsored large-scale survey assessments before and after the International Polar Year in 2007/2008. Polar-knowledge questions have subsequently been tested and refined through other nationwide and regional surveys. More than a decade of such work has established that basic but fairly specific knowledge questions, with all answer choices sounding plausible but one being uniquely correct, can yield highly replicable results. Those results, however, paint a mixed picture of knowledge. Some factual questions seem to be interpreted by many respondents as if they had been asked for their personal beliefs about climate change, so their responses reflect sociopolitical identity rather than physical-world knowledge. Other factual questions, by design, do not link in obvious ways to climate-change beliefs—so responses have simpler interpretations in terms of knowledge gaps, and education needs.

Keywords:

• Surveys
• polar knowledge
• Arctic
• public opinion
• climate change

Disclosure statement

The author declares no financial interest or benefit that has arisen from direct application of this research.

Additional information

Funding

The research described here was supported in many stages by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation (OPP-1136887, DUE-1239783, PLR-1303938, OPP-1748325) and Ford Foundation (“Sustainable development and rural area studies”). Opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of supporting organizations.