Do Trent University Students Support the Divestment From Fossil Fuels Movement? A Methodology Development

Description

By Alaine Spiwak & Kristina Dergacheva, Date of Project Submission: April 2015., Completed for: Climate Justice Trent; Supervising Professor: Dr. Michal Avram; Trent Community Research Centre, IDST 4220 - Assessment of Development Projects, This paper explores the divestment from fossil fuels movement, which is a recent socioenvironmental movement aimed at pressuring Canadian universities and colleges to dissolve current investments, stocks, or bonds in the fossil fuel industry. This divestment campaign took
place at Trent University from 2012-2015, but was unsuccessful in their lobbying for full fossil fuel divestment. As this is a recent movement at Trent, this paper aims to collect data on how to
best survey the level of knowledge and support Trent students have for the divestment campaign.
The specific research questions investigated are: What is the best method of collecting data to
determine if Trent students support divestment from fossil fuels? What is the best method to
engage students with the divestment from fossil fuels movement?
The methods used to answer these research questions involved implementing and testing
four different types of data collection: online surveys, focus groups, semi-structured interviews,
and opportunity sampling. After analyzing all of the data collected, a methodology was developed which will be used by Part II of this project to survey the widest student population
possible, and to break into previously untapped student demographics.