Re the 92%, I agree that it is intrinsically not that interesting. I was flagging it because I was worried that some of the 92% (maybe lots? maybe most?) didn’t really understand that JSO espoused radical tactics. So the survey might be finding “willingness to appear aware of environmental topics leads to support for Friends of the Earth” and not “being aware of JSO leads to support for Friends of the Earth”. In terms of how to account for this, I would have suggested another question in the survey which asks people who said that they have heard of JSO to indicate what JSO is most associated with, and one of the answers is that they are associated with radical tactics, and others are plausible-sounding but false. I appreciate this might be difficult now—the survey is already done. And you might want to draw a line under this and move on. But if you did want to get to the bottom of this concern, you could replicate the survey (probably a fair bit more cheaply than by using YouGov—just code up the survey yourself, which is very easy with GuidedTrack, and then get sample with something like prolific.co)
people who went from 0 awareness to >0 awareness: would be interesting to see if you get round to doing that
I know I raised the question about the distinction between stated intentions and actions, but I should acknowledge that it might not matter. Example: if the intended theory of change is protest --> change in public attitudes --> people change their energy provider; in this case actions are important. Another example: if the intended theory of change is protest --> change in public attitudes --> politicians believing that the public wants change, so the politicians make a change happen; in this case, it actually doesn’t matter whether the public gains enough conviction to change their behaviour—just enough conviction that they answer more positively in a survey is actually sufficient.
Ah I’ve understood you now! I don’t see what you said being a problem as we explicitly put a sentence description in the survey for both JSO and Friends of the Earth explaining a tiny bit about who they were (e.g. they use radical tactics) without anchoring respondents too much. So I’m quite confident that respondents would have known JSO was utilising more disruptive tactics relative to Friends of the Earth. In addition, given how much media coverage JSO got during this week (and for previous actions) I would be quite surprised if a good proportion of people in the UK (50%+?) hadn’t already seen some reference to JSO in the context of arrest, police or disruptive protest.
Agreed about the stated intentions vs action point. I think increasing support for a policy can be a useful public opinion signal, but JSO probably also wants increased desire to take action on climate change (e.g. sign a petition, attend protest, etc), which we didn’t find a change in.
Thanks for pointing me to Simpson et al 2022.
Re the 92%, I agree that it is intrinsically not that interesting. I was flagging it because I was worried that some of the 92% (maybe lots? maybe most?) didn’t really understand that JSO espoused radical tactics. So the survey might be finding “willingness to appear aware of environmental topics leads to support for Friends of the Earth” and not “being aware of JSO leads to support for Friends of the Earth”. In terms of how to account for this, I would have suggested another question in the survey which asks people who said that they have heard of JSO to indicate what JSO is most associated with, and one of the answers is that they are associated with radical tactics, and others are plausible-sounding but false. I appreciate this might be difficult now—the survey is already done. And you might want to draw a line under this and move on. But if you did want to get to the bottom of this concern, you could replicate the survey (probably a fair bit more cheaply than by using YouGov—just code up the survey yourself, which is very easy with GuidedTrack, and then get sample with something like prolific.co)
people who went from 0 awareness to >0 awareness: would be interesting to see if you get round to doing that
I know I raised the question about the distinction between stated intentions and actions, but I should acknowledge that it might not matter. Example: if the intended theory of change is protest --> change in public attitudes --> people change their energy provider; in this case actions are important. Another example: if the intended theory of change is protest --> change in public attitudes --> politicians believing that the public wants change, so the politicians make a change happen; in this case, it actually doesn’t matter whether the public gains enough conviction to change their behaviour—just enough conviction that they answer more positively in a survey is actually sufficient.
Ah I’ve understood you now! I don’t see what you said being a problem as we explicitly put a sentence description in the survey for both JSO and Friends of the Earth explaining a tiny bit about who they were (e.g. they use radical tactics) without anchoring respondents too much. So I’m quite confident that respondents would have known JSO was utilising more disruptive tactics relative to Friends of the Earth. In addition, given how much media coverage JSO got during this week (and for previous actions) I would be quite surprised if a good proportion of people in the UK (50%+?) hadn’t already seen some reference to JSO in the context of arrest, police or disruptive protest.
Agreed about the stated intentions vs action point. I think increasing support for a policy can be a useful public opinion signal, but JSO probably also wants increased desire to take action on climate change (e.g. sign a petition, attend protest, etc), which we didn’t find a change in.