FOCUS GROUP ON CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE

Climate change research is in a vulnerable position in the current US political climate. Atmospheric science should be a bipartisan non-polarized topic. Right now, too high a percentage of US population have a negative perception of climate change. Along with the scientific facts, we need to investigate the reasons for these perceptions to be able to convince them.

Focus groups are a great way to investigate people’s perspectives, which then can help administrators to design better services. It has been shown that people in the same political party are more effective in convincing each other. We are going to design a focus group with participants who are pro climate republicans. We will have a conversation on how their political party believes is allowing them to connect with climate change science. Having an informal conversion around a table would help them to express their ideas, which in turn would help us to have a more thorough understanding of their views. The results would ideally show us how we can have successful communication with all different part of US society. The results would be useful to make a road map to resolve this negative perception. This research will be conducted under the WISE scholarship program of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.