Ocean Project Research

Current Research

Beginning the fall of 2007 and running through the fall of 2010, The Ocean Project is undertaking an exciting national project to find out how the ocean community can connect more effectively with the American public in order to build environmental literacy. While this project focuses on the United States, we expect many of the findings and recommendations will be applicable in other nations around the world.

Our aim is to determine what must be communicated to increase awareness and stimulate positive behavior change. In 1999 The Ocean Project completed what remains the most comprehensive opinion research on public attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of the ocean ever conducted. This survey provided our Partners and the ocean community with the tools to be more effective educators and communicators for conservation of our ocean.

Nearly 10 years later, we need to increase our understanding of how people relate to the ocean. During this three-year project, we will update and strategically expand our research to develop a more highly detailed database of public awareness, knowledge, and attitudes, and develop recommendations to enable educators and communicators to build ocean literacy more effectively in their visitors. Re-testing the 1999 findings will measure changes that have occurred and provide a more comprehensive metric for the future evaluations. These data will be essential as the institutions, agencies and organizations of the ocean community work together and independently to engage people, inform decision-makers, and enhance ocean literacy.

The study will include a comprehensive review of existing literature, qualitative and quantitative research, analysis of the data, and publication and broad dissemination, including recommendations for programs and content that build ocean literacy. The qualitative research will help us better understand the motivations, psychology, and emotions behind segments of the public's attitudes toward the ocean and will be used to design the quantitative survey instrument. Traditional focus groups, as well as more modern online discussion groups, will be used. Online surveys are increasingly being used as a cost-effective method for acquiring information to answer strategic communications questions. Thus, for the quantitative research we will conduct Internet-based survey work using representative samples drawn from online panels.

Disseminating the results to our Partner network and other agencies and institutions, and fostering the integration of the findings into their programs is vital. In the project's second phase, The Ocean Project will embark on an intensive, proactive communications strategy to make our Partners aware of the results and engage them in integrating the findings into their educational and communications efforts.

We anticipate that this strategy will increase the capacity of the ocean community to develop as more effective voices for the ocean, the environment, and conservation, and to assist them in building a more environmentally literate and sustainable society.

This national research and dissemination project is funded through the Environmental Literacy Grants at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

Completed Research