The Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post Climate Change Survey

The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation Survey Project is a partnership combining survey research and reporting to better inform the public. The Post-KFF Climate Change Survey, the 34th in the series, was conducted with a probability-based sample of 2,293 adults ages 18 and over and 629 teens between the ages of 13 and 17. Interviews were administered online and by telephone from July 9 through August 5, 2019 in English and Spanish.

NORC at the University of Chicago conducted sampling, interviewing, and tabulation for the survey using the AmeriSpeak Panel, a representative panel of adults age 18 and over living in the United States. AmeriSpeak Panel members are recruited through probability sampling methods using the NORC National Sample Frame, an address-based sampling frame. Panel members who do not have internet access complete surveys via telephone, and internet users complete surveys via the web (for the current study, 303 adults and 8 teens completed via phone; 1,990 adults and 621 teens via web). In order to allow for separate regional analysis, adult panelists living in the following regions were selected at disproportionately higher rates: Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado); Upper Mountain West/Midwest (Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho); New England (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island); and Southeast (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas gulf coast counties: Orange, Jefferson, Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Brazoria, Matagorda, Jackson, Calhoun, Victoria, Refugio, Aransas, San Patricio, Nueces, Kleberg, Kenedy, Willacy, Cameron).

Fully enrolled teens (i.e., those for whom NORC has obtained parent consent, teen assent, and a complete teen profile) were eligible for sampling and recruitment from NORC’s AmeriSpeak Teen Panel, a probability-based panel of teens recruited via parents in the AmeriSpeak adult panel.

The combined results for teens and adults have been adjusted to weight oversampled geographic areas back to their accurate share of the adult population and to account for systematic nonresponse along known population parameters.

For adults, the first weighting stage made adjustments to account for the regional oversampling and for differential nonresponse to the survey screening interview. In the second weighting stage, the sample was adjusted to match known demographic distributions of the U.S. population using the following parameters: age, sex, education, race/ethnicity, and Census Division. Interviews in the oversampled regions were also weighted to match demographics within those regions. Region-level population benchmarks were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Fact Finder for race/ethnicity and from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) for all other benchmarks.

The teen sample was weighted using a similar procedure, except that there was no regional oversampling for the teen sample so no oversample adjustment was needed. Demographic benchmarks for teens were obtained from the 2017 ACS for age, sex, parents’ highest education, race/ethnicity, and Census Division.

The margin of sampling error including the design effect for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points for adults and 5 percentage points for teens. All statistical tests of significance account for the effect of weighting. For results based on other subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher. Sample sizes and margins of sampling error for other subgroups are available by request. Note that sampling error is only one of many potential sources of error in this or any other public opinion poll.

This questionnaire was administered with the exact questions in the exact order as appears in this document; question numbering may not be sequential. If a question was asked of a reduced base of the sample, a parenthetical preceding the question identifies the group asked.

The Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post paid for the survey and representatives of The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation worked together to develop the survey questionnaire and analyze the results. Each organization bears the sole responsibility for the work that appears under its name. The project team from the Kaiser Family Foundation included: Mollyann Brodie, Ph.D., Liz Hamel, Lunna Lopes, and Cailey Muñana. The project team from The Washington Post included: Scott Clement and Emily Guskin. Both The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation Public Opinion and Survey Research team are charter members of the Transparency Initiative of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.