'Conspiracy beliefs and opposition to wind farms (RI-CLPM)' (AsPredicted #140,537)
Author(s) Kevin Winter (University of Hohenheim) - kevin.winter@uni-hohenheim.de Lotte Pummerer (Universität Bremen) - lotte.pummerer@uni-mannheim.de Kai Sassenberg (Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen) - ksa@leibniz-psychology.org
Pre-registered on 2023/08/09 03:17 (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? It's complicated. We have already collected some data but explain in Question 8 why readers may consider this a valid pre-registration nevertheless.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? Research question: Does believing in conspiracy theories predict opposition to wind farms across time?
Hypothesis: Changes in conspiracy mentality predict more opposition to wind farms across time.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. In order to measure opposition, we will ask participants to indicate their attitudes towards wind farms close to their hometown (4 items, measured from 1 to 7 with higher scores indicating more positive attitudes and, thus, lower opposition).
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? No experimental conditions. All participants will receive the same set of items.
Conspiracy mentality (12 items) will be assessed as independent variable.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We will conduct a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (Hamaker et al., 2015) using lavaan (Rosseel, 2012) in order to examine whether a change in conspiracy mentality from t(k) to t(k+1) will predict an increased opposition (i.e., more negative attitudes) to wind farms from (tk+1) to t(k+2).
Our hypothesis is confirmed, when changes in attitues are predicted by changes in conspiracy mentality.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. Exclusion criteria:
- less than 18 years old
- psychology students
- not speaking German fluently
- taking the survey multiple times (at one timepoint)
- failing both attention check items (t1: "The Government deceives the citizens. Please answer this question with '1 = strongly disagree'", "Great events need equally great explanations. Please answer this question with '4'") at one of the timepoints.
The remaining data will be checked for outliers using studentized deleted residuals (SDR) from a multiple regression of attitudes towards wind farms close to one's hometown (t3) on conspiracy mentality (t1 and t2) and the attitudes towards wind farms close to one's hometown (t1 and t2). Participants with an absolute SDR > 2.59 in the multiple regression analysis will be excluded from further analysis.
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. We collected data of 663 participants at t1 of which 416 fulfilled our preregistered inclusion criteria at t2. These criteria and the respective power analysis are specified in a different preregistration (pertaining to t1 and t2 which we already conducted, see explanation under #8). Those 416 participants will be invited to participate in t3.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) T1 and t2 were already conducted. We will now collect a third wave in order to run the analyses specified above (i.e., RI-CLPM).
Secondary analyses: We will also test the longitudinal effects of (a) specific conspiracy beliefs on attitudes towards wind farms close to one's hometown, (b) conspiracy mentality on voting in favor of the wind farms (as we only measure voting at t2 and t3, and as voting at t2 correlated with the attitudes towards wind farms close to one's hometown to r = .74, we will use the attitudes towards wind farms close to one's hometown as substitute for voting at t1), and (c) conspiracy mentality on specific conspiracy beliefs following the procedure described under #5. To this end, we additionally assess specific conspiracy beliefs about the expansion of wind energy (5 items) and the willingness to vote in favor of constructing five wind energy plants in a fictitious referendum in their hometown (rating from 0% = "I would definitely vote with no" to 100% = "I would definitely vote with yes").
For exploratory purposes, we include a measure of attitude towards wind farms in general (4 items) and of political orientation (1 item) at all timepoints.
The time interval between t1 and t2, as well as t2 and t3 is approximately 4 months.
