A Study of Amber Alerts and Canada's Emergency Alert System
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School of Social Science 1 July 2020 Morals, Mobiles, and Mandatory Alerts: A Study of Amber Alerts and Canada’s Emergency Alert System Informal Summary Report of Quantitative Survey Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Authorship ........................................................................................................................................................... 3 Contributors ........................................................................................................................................................ 3 Funding ............................................................................................................................................................... 3 Participants ......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 Background ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Report Structure ................................................................................................................................................. 4 About the survey ................................................................................................................................................. 4 Data cleaning and final sample .......................................................................................................................... 4 Timing of survey distribution ............................................................................................................................... 5 Attitudes Amongst the General Population ................................................................................................... 7 Attitudes towards Amber Alerts .......................................................................................................................... 7 Perceptions of child abduction ............................................................................................................................ 9 Perceived importance of Issuing Amber Alerts ................................................................................................ 13 Amber Alert issuing methods ............................................................................................................................ 14 Amber Alert recollection.................................................................................................................................... 15 Alert Ready issuing ........................................................................................................................................... 16 Phone notifications ........................................................................................................................................... 18 Punitiveness ..................................................................................................................................................... 18 Moral Foundations ............................................................................................................................................ 19 Descriptives table ........................................................................................................................................... 20 Explanatory notes ........................................................................................................................................... 26 Definitions ......................................................................................................................................................... 26 Survey mode and participant recruitment ......................................................................................................... 27 Sample representativeness .............................................................................................................................. 28 References ...................................................................................................................................................... 31 Appendix A ...................................................................................................................................................... 32 Morals, Mobiles, and Mandatory Alerts: A Study of Amber Alerts and Canada’s Emergency Alert System 2 Disclaimer This report is intended to provide an indicative summary of results for those who participated in the survey as part of the Ethical Approval for this project, and for other interested parties. The results in this report and are not finalised and have not undergone peer-review. Please refer to the project webpage here for updates on official publications resulting from this survey and research. The results provided here are summary and indicative, and while the best efforts have been made to ensure their accuracy, future analysis and more advanced statistical techniques may differ from the findings reported here and those published in the final thesis and peer-reviewed publications. The author apologises for the delay in the publication of these findings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Acknowledgements Authorship The author of this report is Monique Lynn of the University of Queensland, Australia. Dr Suzanna Fay, Dr Robin Fitzgerald, and Matthew Zelko provided guidance and reviews. Contributors The author of this report particularly acknowledges the additional support and insights of Dr Tim Graham, Rhys Brailsford, Dr Renee Zahnow, Dr Michelle Sydes, and Dr Emma Antrobus. Funding This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, and has also received financial assistance from the University of Queensland, School of Social Science via a Higher Degree Research Bursary. All other funding for this research has been provided by the author. Participants The author and supervisory team very gratefully thank and acknowledge the 723 individuals across Canada who completed this survey. Morals, Mobiles, and Mandatory Alerts: A Study of Amber Alerts and Canada’s Emergency Alert System 3 Introduction Background This project aims to investigate what people think and how people feel about Amber Alerts and the Alert Ready system in Canada. Alert Ready is Canada’s national emergency alert system. It is a mandatory system (meaning that individuals cannot opt in or out) that sends a message accompanied by a unique siren and vibration to all compatible cell phones near an emergency event. Alert Ready was launched in April 2018 and may be used to alert people of natural disasters, biological hazards, severe weather events, and Amber Alerts. Amber Alerts are issued by law enforcement to advise the public when a child has been abducted or is deemed missing and at risk. They intend to ask for the public’s help to safely and swiftly recover the child. Using a mixed-methods approach with quantitative survey data and qualitative and quantitative social media data, this project seeks to understand the Canadian public’s response to mandatory Amber Alerts sent to individuals’ mobile/cell phones. Report Structure This document details the preliminary quantitative survey results of the PhD research project Morals, Mobiles, and Mandatory Alerts: A Study of Amber Alerts and Canada’s Emergency Alert System. It is intended to provide summary results of the survey to those who participated, and others who are interested in this study. The remaining introductory materials provide an overview of the survey’s distribution and the final sample. The subsequent chapter, ‘Attitudes Amongst the General Population’ outlines key findings from the descriptive statistics and major attitudinal trends. The final section of this report, ‘Explanatory notes’, provides explanations and definitions of key terms and concepts, and details sample recruitment and the representativeness of the survey sample in comparison to Statistics Canada figures. About the survey The survey component of this study was distributed from 19th May 2019 – 6th June 2019 (Canadian time), with participants recruited via Qualtrics and completing the survey online in the Qualtrics portal. It will be referred to in this report as the Morals, Mobiles, and Mandatory Alerts (MMMA) survey. The survey consisted of approximately 95 questions regarding attitudes towards Amber Alerts, Alert Ready, phone notifications, punitiveness, and morality, as well as demographic items. Further details on the distribution of the survey are located in the Explanatory notes. Data cleaning and final sample In total, 723 completed survey responses were received over this period. A data cleaning process was undertaken following the standards for Moral Foundations studies, a theoretical framework which informs this project (Ciuk, 2018; Clifford, Iyengar, Cabeza, & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2015; Milesi, 2016; Nilsson, Erlandsson, & Västfjäll, 2016). Accordingly, respondents who did not pass attention-check questions (n = 114, 15.77%) and participants that appeared likely to have straight-lined responses (n =27, 3.73%) were identified and removed listwise, resulting