Figure 5

The relationship between students’ political party identification and personal importance of GCC. In this figure, blue circles and the blue positive trend line represent the relationship between post-course personal importance of GCC and identification as a Democrat. Red triangles and the red negative trend line represent the relationship between post-course personal importance of GCC and identification as a Republican. The sizes of the symbols increase with increasing number of overlapping data points so that their distribution can be more easily visualized. Here the trends are essentially opposite for students identifying with the two parties, with a positive Pearson’s correlation coefficient (0.128) for Democrats, and a negative one (−0.109) for Republicans. It is important to note, however, that the two variables were more weakly correlated, for both Democrats and Republicans, when comparing post-course attitudes towards climate change rather than pre-course attitudes.