Title: “Any questions? Seeking public interest in climate change”

Speaker: Sarah Lewis (Teachers College-Columbia University)

Format: Hybrid

Virtual: Zoom link provided upon registration

*Please note that in-person space is limited.*

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Abstract: An effective response to climate change demands an engaged public through behavior, buy-in, and expressions of concern and priorities. Yet this engagement can be hindered by gaps in trust and understanding between the public and scientists, policymakers, and industry leaders. The UNFCCC’s Action for Climate Empowerment framework emphasizes that public awareness—alongside formal education—is essential for closing these gaps.

To get there, researchers argue we need to engage the public in dialogue that reflects who they are and how they see the world. To date, most research efforts to understand the public have relied on top-down measurements of attitudes, ideology, and literacy using closed-ended survey questions. This study builds on those efforts by analyzing over 900 responses to an open-ended survey question asking what Americans, in their own words, want to know about climate change.

Using a mixed-methods approach allowed us to both capture the texture of public curiosity—what people wonder about, and how they frame it—and to extract statistically meaningful and actionable patterns from a complex dataset. After inductively coding responses by theme, we used Latent Class Analysis to identify distinct profiles of questioners, followed by bivariate analysis to explore variation across demographic and attitudinal groups.

Our findings reveal three profiles of Americans—Response Seekers, Impact Probers, and Consensus Challengers. While each profile reflects known associations between climate change beliefs and broader group characteristics, each profile is internally diverse, complicating simple assumptions about who cares about what, and why.

Bio: Sarah Lewis is a qualitative and quantitative researcher focused on how people navigate uncertainty and complexity, and what that means for teaching and learning around socio-scientific issues. She recently earned her M.A. in International and Comparative Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she was a graduate researcher with the Center for Sustainable Futures. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Religion from Bowdoin College.

Time: 12:00-1:30 pm EST

Free!

Registration