#111498 | AsPredicted

'Radical Flank Survey for UK Climate Movement'
(AsPredicted #111498)


Author(s)
This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review.
It has one author.
Pre-registered on
11/02/2022 02:51 AM (PT)

1) Have any data been collected for this study already?
No, no data have been collected for this study yet.

2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study?
Our study will test the radical flank effect - a theory that suggests that the existence and activities of groups that are seen as radical will lead to increased support for their more moderate counterparts.

Our hypothesis:
The presence of a radical (versus moderate) flank will lead to a) more identification with and b) greater support for the moderate group.

In this instance, the radical group being studied is Just Stop Oil and the moderate group will be Friends of the Earth.

3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured.
The referenced numbers below are from the following document with all survey questions:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZNDiOHnIwzLY5TqjIlE264gIk0Wt248qwPS3FFIm1p0/edit?usp=sharing

We will measure the following variables:
Support for climate policies: Composite of questions 1-3
Support for Just Stop Oil's goals: Composite of questions 1-2
Support for Friends of the Earth's goals: Single item score for question 3
Awareness of Just Stop Oil: Single item score for 4a
Awareness of Friends of the Earth: Single item score for 4b
Perceived extremity of tactics: Composite of Question 5a), 5b) and 5c) as well as individual item scores
Identification with Just Stop Oil: Single score from question 7a)
Identification with Friends of the Earth: Single score from question 7b)
Measure of support for Just Stop Oil: Composite of Questions 8, 9 and 10
Measure of support for Friends of the Earth: Composite of 11, 12 and 13
Willingness to act for Just Stop Oil: We will examine questions 14,15 and 16 as individual items as well as a composite score
Willingness to act for Friends of the Earth: We will examine questions 17,18 and 19 as individual items as well as a composite score

4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to?
No conditions - no experimental aspect.

5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis.
Our analyses will test the following:
1) Whether increased salience of Just Stop Oil, measured by Question 4a in the document above, leads to increased identification with Friends of the Earth
2) Whether increased salience of Just Stop Oil is correlated with higher levels of support for Friends of the Earth.
3) Whether increased salience of Just Stop Oil leads to any positive or negative change in support for climate policies

For each question and time-point comparison, a paired samples two-tailed t-test with bootstrapped p-value with 99,999 samples will be calculated. 95% confidence intervals on Cohen's d will also be constructed, with limit intervals also bootstrapped using 99,999 samples.

To correct for multiple comparisons, we will hold the false discovery rate at 10% for the t-tests for each variable, following Benjamini and Hochberg (1995)

6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations.
All participants will be included but means will only be calculated if at least half of items that were responded to were not missing (e.g. "don't know"), otherwise the mean will be missing.

We will deal with attrition using multiple imputation, and demographic variables provided by YouGov

7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size?
No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined.

1600 at the first sample, then recontact for all participants for the second time period (with an expected attrition of 20%). With this sample size, we'll have a power of 80% and a level of significance of 5% to detect an effect size of 0.08 between pairs.

8) Anything else you would like to pre-register?
(e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?)

We will additionally analyse whether there is any change in the likelihood to engage in various forms of civil action (question 14-19).

We are also collecting information whether people acknowledge they have heard of a fictional group, People for Climate Justice, and may exclude some participants who answer "1 - Heard a great deal" about them.

As of the writing of this pre-registration, the single author of this pre-registration was the only author involved in this research project.

Version of AsPredicted Questions: 2.00