This site provides estimates of climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy preferences at the county and regional levels in Ireland – a new source of data on public opinion that can inform national and county-level decision-making, policy, and education initiatives. The estimates are derived from a statistical model using multilevel regression with post-stratification (MRP) on a large national survey dataset (n = 4,000), along with demographic and geographic population characteristics.
Validating models is essential for producing accurate results. Our estimates were validated through comparisons with the weighted survey results and through cross-validation of the model. Based on comparisons with disaggregated values (i.e., weighted county averages) for counties with at least 150 respondents, the mean absolute error is 1.5 percentage points at the county level. Note that the error inherent in the original national surveys themselves is ±3 percentage points.
For more details on the model or methods, please see the peer-reviewed paper: Howe, P., Mildenberger, M., Marlon, J.R., and Leiserowitz, A., “Geographic variation in opinions on climate change at state and local scales in the USA,” Nature Climate Change. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2583.
