Measuring Public Attitudes Toward Natural Resource Issues: Coyote Control

A method to obtain quantitative information on public attitudes toward natural resource issues is described.1 The quantification depends on the structure of the entire survey instrument as well as on individual items in the survey. Items are designed and organized to facilitate (1) the summarizing of measured attitudes toward very complex resource issues, and (2) meaningful comparisons of the summary attitudinal measures to other quantified impacts --economic and physical --for policy analysis. A U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study of the costs and benefits of coyote control illustrates the quantification process.