A study on developing a general attitude scale about environmental issues for students in different grade levels

The aim of this study is to develop an attitude scale towards environmental issues for students in different grade levels. In this study, the GASE was developed through the use of a five-stage model proposed by the authors. Subsequent to an extensive review of literature and compositions written by students, the item pool was composed, validated by experts and then an initial draft of the instrument was constructed. Later, this initial draft was reviewed by the experts (on Environmental education, biology education, educational psychology, and educational measurement), the GASE was administered to 1,225 students in different grade levels. The factorial structure of the scale provided validity and further reliability evidences. Lastly the validity (particularly construct validity) and reliability of the attitude scale were calculated.

The 27-item GASE was found to measure five dimensions of environmental issues. The GASE was also subjected to factor analysis, for exploring factor structures, and reliability analyses, for investigating reliability of each factor. The results of the factor analyses reveal that there are five factors for the attitudes towards environmental issues. With these aspects, this study differs from previous studies in terms of the development of the environmental issues with five clearly defined factors.

• Factor 1: Willingness to learn and inform about environmental issues (Item 8, 9, 10, 20, 22, 28 and 32)

• Factor 2: Disbelief in explanations related to environmental issues (Item 17, 21, 23, 27, 29, 31and 33)

• Factor 3: Sensitivity towards environmental issues and saving the environment (Item 14, 18, 24, 26, 30 and 34)

• Factor 4: Disbelief in environmental pollution (Item 5, 7, 11, 13 and 15)

• Factor 5: Belief in protecting Habitat (Item 3, 4)

Factor analysis with principle component methods revealed seven factors behind GASE which explain 46.114% of the total variance together. These factors were named according to the characteristics of the items loaded on that factor. Also, the means and standard divisions of upper 27% and lower 27% points were calculated, and the P value and t-tests between items’ means of the upper 27% and lower 27% points in item analysis of the scale for the validity of the GASE items. The t-test results showed significant differences between each items’ means of the upper 27% and lower 27% points. According to this result, it was decided that 27 items of the GASE are appropriate to measure students of different levels attitudes' towards environmental issues. In addition to croanbach alpha correlation, coefficients of five factors were calculated using Cronbach’s alpha reliability of the factors and ranged from 0.55 to 0.88, indicating acceptable reliability range (Kline 1994, Fraser 1989; Büyük Öztürk, 2004) despite the low level reliability of Factor 5 (0.55). The internal consistency of “willingness to learn and inform about environmental issues” was 0.71, “disbelief in explanations related to environmental issues” was 0.76, “sensitivity towards environmental issues and saving the environment” was 0.77, “disbelief in environmental pollution” was 0.70 and “belief in protecting life” was 0.55. The overall scale reliability was calculated as 0.88. According to the results, we have identified five important factors in exploring students' attitudes towards environmental issues, students’ willingness to learn and inform about environmental issues, disbelief in explaining related environmental issues, sensitivity towards environmental issues and saving environment, disbelief in environmental pollution and belief to protect life.

It is very important that students want to willingly learn and inform about environmental issues, sensitivity towards the environment and its protection, belief in the importance of explaining environmental issues, belief in environmental pollution and the belief that it is necessary to protect life. If Students have these aspects, they are aware of environmental issues and can be conscious about environmental issues. So, it is believed that the GASE is very useful attitude scale in order to measure these aspects.

It must be emphasized that the GASE, which allows researchers to study students in different grade levels attitudes' towards environmental issues, was developed. Many of the research conducted in the literature are limited to participants from a single level, such as elementary school, high school or university, but this study was carefully designed with respect to the diversity of participants from elementary school, high school or university. The authors intended to select students in different levels at these schools and of different genders (the number of males and females was balanced). So, the attitude scale comprehensive for students in elementary school, high school and university.

Researchers now have an attitude scale towards environmental issues in five dimensions, which contain different aspects of environmental issues for a better understanding. Of course, it is believed to be necessary to apply this scale in different countries to see whether it works similarly. It is believed that further validations would provide very fruitful information whether the scale can also be used for students. In addition, some dimensions that loaded with low number of items (two or five) should be further evaluated, and related items can be added to the questionnaire.

The attitude scale that was developed in this study (GASE) will fill the gap in the literature related to environmental issues. Followed by the additional validation studies, the GASE will serve as a valuable tool for both instructors and researchers to assess students' attitudes towards environmental issues.