I wrote in April about what decision science research tells us about how people respond to environmental issues and what that means for communicators. Now the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University has released an illustrated guide to the psychology of climate change communication—handily summarized by Grist blogger Jonathan Hiskes here.

Even if you’re not communicating directly or specifically about climate change, take a look. There are nuggets here that can be useful to people trying to influence behavior on a spectrum of environment-related topics—from clean tech companies trying to get staid industries to adopt new technologies to universities trying to boost participation in campus sustainability efforts.

Much of the advice boils down to the fundamental communications truth—it’s not about you; it’s about your audience. Know who they are, speak their language, put problems and solutions in their context, be concrete, don’t exaggerate, and give people easy ways to act. You’ve no doubt heard these rules before (we certainly can’t shut up about them), but this guide gives you the science behind why you ignore them at your peril, and may give you fresh ideas on how to to apply them.

Communicating about sustainability inevitably means communicating about statistics—something I think it’s fair to say we all struggle to do well. How do you make huge numbers, often measuring things that are invisible to us (carbon dioxide emissions, kilowatt hours), meaningful enough to make an impression on people?

Carolyn addressed this earlier this year, providing a neat summary of the use of Fermi problems to tackle the challenge. I’m happy to add another inspiration source, a recent Fast Company column by Made to Stick authors Dan and Chip Heath, “The Gripping Statistic: How to Make Your Data Matter.”

As the Heaths point out, some communicators realize that “big numbers fuzz our brains,” and understand that they need to be translated to something that relates to everyday life. Attempts to solve the problem often don’t pan out, however. One particularly useful (if disgusting) example from the column:

Building intuition about numbers is different from shocking people with numbers. We’ve all heard stats like this one (which is real): 27 billion disposable diapers are used each year in the United States—enough to stretch all the way to the moon and back seven times. What to say about this? For starters, it would be a funny joke to play on the astronauts.

But notice that the astronomical analogy blocks any useful intuition. Would we feel better, for instance, if the diapers only stretched to the moon and back once? That would be just as gross, yet it would mean that six out of every seven families had given up disposables.

The problem here is not just relatability (while we all understand that the moon is far away, most of us haven’t been there) but utility: illustrating the abundance of disposable diapers this way doesn’t give us any insight into how big a problem this is or how we might address it. As the Heaths say, “A good statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion.”

For  example? There are a couple in the column. If anyone has others, I’d love to hear them.

I’m excited to report that the Thinkshift® Credibility Quotient™ is ready for public consumption: we are beta testing it now, and would love your feedback.

We’ve been working on the CQ (as we call it in-house) for some time, and it’s exciting because as far as we know, this is the first system for measuring the credibility of communications—and letting people see how they stack up against competitors.

Why credibility? It’s a huge issue for companies trying to get people to adopt clean technology or a new approach, and for any company or institution promoting sustainability initiatives. (Don’t want to be accused of greenwashing? You’d better be credible.) It’s essential to being persuasive, whether you’re trying to convince people to buy a product or service, support your endeavors, or take action on an issue. And it’s just too important to assess based solely on insider impressions.

The CQ rates the credibility of any type of communication (websites, reports, marketing collateral) on a weighted 100-point scale. The system considers 10 factors integral to credibility and scores for each, with the most important receiving the most weight. The CQ rating (or grade) is the sum of those scores.

Thinkshift can provide a Credibility Quotient for a single communications vehicle or an entire program, or benchmark an organization’s communications against others in its field.

You can download a PDF that tells you more about how the CQ works and includes sample ratings (short versions) here: http://www.thinkshiftcom.com/ThinkshiftCQ_beta.pdf.

We’d love to know what you think: Do you see the value? Is it something your organization, or one you’re familiar with, could use?