Projects

Enhancing the Coastal IQ Survey: Measuring knowledge and attitudes of Gulf Coast residents

Abstract

Coastal areas are the most developed in the nation, home to more than 53% of the nation’s population and increasing by 3600 people per day (NOAA, 1998).  This coastal population growth, climate change, and sea level rise all foretell increases in coastal hazards, climate-associated risks, socioeconomic impacts, and coastal resilience concerns. The Resiliency Social Climate Survey (Coastal IQ Survey) is an attempt to contribute to the understanding of resiliency issues through the introduction of an institutional-based perspective that stresses not simply individual variations in behaviors and attitudes, but rather attempts to use cross-sectional survey data for the measurement of societal norms, practices, and beliefs surrounding resiliency issues. This project will provide regional enhancement money to the on-going Coastal IQ survey funded by the Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA) Coastal Community Resilience Priority Team.  This survey addresses public knowledge and attitudes toward coastal hazards, storm preparation, evacuation decisions, resilience, and community. By leveraging the extant Coastal IQ survey funds with additional Coastal Storms Program funds, this project would be able to: 1) increase the survey sample size in MS, AL, and Eastern LA, 2) increase the geographic resolution (representative data for smaller areas), and 3) fund development of education and outreach products for the AL-MS-LA region. Based on the current Coastal Storms Program funding schedule, this money would be available to enhance the first year of the Coastal IQ Survey. The Coastal IQ survey will create a measure of knowledge and attitudes associated with the focus resilience issues.  The construction of the measures will present the results as a gradient, charting knowledge from low to high, and attitudes from non-acceptance to full acceptance.  This will allow for annual tracking of changes in knowledge and attitudes and provide a information source to interested agencies (e.g. emergency management, National Weather Service) to show areas that need educational focus and track the results of educational efforts. Regional, State, and Local emergency managers, planners, and other officials are one of the primary audiences of this information. The GOMA funded survey design activity includes outreach to this same group.  So the officials will be involved from the beginning.  The survey result will be designed to the answer questions of the officials and provide feedback on the baseline knowledge and attitudes of their constituents.  Outreach and education to these officials will come in the form of project-designed products (reports and information sheets) providing geographically-specific knowledge and attitudinal information to them. NOAA Coastal Services Center can utilize this system to better understand the social context of the Gulf region, supporting efforts such as the RiskWise initiative, the Coastal Storms Program, and the Coastal Resilience and Vulnerability Assessment Tool.  Based on local and state partners’ needs, CSC can also develop products derived from the survey’s data.

Objectives

  1. Coordinate activities with the GOMA funded Coastal IQ Survey Project
  2. Design geographic regions based on number of surveys to be conducted
  3. Conduct survey
  4. Develop survey results
  5. Develop reports for the survey’s geographic regions
  6. Design and distribute web-based materials based on survey results and regional reports
  7. Write completion report
  8. Present at Bays and Bayous 2010

Methodology

The Resiliency Social Climate Survey will be administered to representative samples of Gulf of Mexico coastal adults who will be interviewed by telephone. For each of the states (TX, LA, MS, AL, FL), adults will be surveyed. The sample will represent the civilian, non-institutionalized adult population over age 18. Households will be selected using random digit dialing procedures to include households with unlisted numbers. Once a household is contacted, the adult to be interviewed is selected by asking to speak with the person in the household who is 18 years of age or older and who will have the next birthday. Five attempts were made to contact those selected adults who were not home. The sample is weighted by race and gender, based on the most current U.S. Census estimates.

The survey will be conducted by the Social Science Research Center’s survey Research Unit, a state-of-the-art CATI, mixed-mode, and secure web-based survey facilities with an annual interviewing capacity of 108,000 household ten minute interviews/monitoring and 100,000 organization/business interviews. The 15 year relationship with Survey Sampling Inc. (SSI) of Fairfax, CT provides the SRU with the capacity to conduct rapid response surveys, as well as sample from specific geographic locations, age groups, income levels, and race/ethnicities. SSI also facilitates risk assessment and simulation by providing FIPS codes for each sampled respondent. Thus multi-level analyses on risk assessment can be conducted by linking primary data to extant county- and state-level population and contextual data.

To facilitate the interpretation and application of the survey results, the Social Climate Survey approach uses the following heuristic classification scheme for assessing the social penetration of tobacco control in American society. Some issues are fully ingrained into society and are thus considered to be universally accepted. Other issues are strongly supported, but continue to be rejected by a small, but nontrivial segment of society. These issues are considered as predominant cultural norms, beliefs, and practices. Contested issues, on the other hand, are areas in which there remain substantial differences of opinion across society. The support and opposition for these controls are roughly matched across society. Finally, some issues are supported by only a small segment of society and are considered to be culturally marginal norms, practices, or beliefs.

By identifying universal, predominant, contested, and marginal aspects of the social climate, it becomes possible to develop a more informed understanding of resiliency issues. To illustrate, it may not be necessary to target culturally universal norms, practices, and beliefs because these aspects of resiliency are already deeply ingrained, but they may serve as anchors for campaign efforts to target contested aspects of the social climate. Finally, this approach can identify those aspects of the resiliency social climate which are only marginally ingrained and likely to be very resistant to interventions.  The following classification scheme is used to categorize the degree to which aspects of resiliency impact the daily lives of Americans.

Heuristic Classification Scheme for Assessing the Social Penetration of Normative Beliefs, Health Beliefs, and Practices

Universal – Universal normative beliefs, health beliefs, and practices
     Held by the overwhelming majority of society members: 85-100%
Predominant – Predominant normative beliefs, health beliefs, and practices
     Held by a predominance of society members: 65-84%
Contested – Contested normative beliefs, health beliefs, and practices
     Held by half of society members: 35-64%
Marginal – Marginal normative beliefs, health beliefs, and practices
    Held by 0-34% of society members

This approach and the resultant measures provide a powerful tool for tracking change in societal knowledge and attitudes.  The survey results will highlight knowledge levels and acceptance of resilience concepts across social institutions.  These results can be used by state, federal, and local agencies to identify areas of low knowledge or acceptance that are critical to their mission.  These agencies can then craft education and outreach efforts utilizing these results to improve knowledge and acceptance of these areas.  The follow-up surveys (annual surveying) provide one tool to track changes that may have resulted from the education efforts.

Rationale

This coastal population growth, climate change, and sea level rise all foretell increases in coastal hazards, climate-associated risks, socioeconomic impacts, and coastal resilience concerns. The Resiliency Social Climate Survey (Coastal IQ Survey) is an attempt to contribute to the understanding of resiliency issues through the introduction of an institutional-based perspective that stresses not simply individual variations in behaviors and attitudes, but rather attempts to use cross-sectional survey data for the measurement of societal norms, practices, and beliefs surrounding resiliency issues. This project will provide regional enhancement money to the on-going Coastal IQ survey funded by the Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA) Coastal Community Resilience Priority Team.