Environmental Responsibility in Secondary School Students: Development, Validation & Relationships between Environmental Scales

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to develop four scales assessing environmental responsibility in secondary school students and also to test the factorial validity of the scales through two consecutive studies. The first study was conducted on a sample of 234 secondary school students (135 girls and 99 boys) and developed in two phases. In the first phase, four scales were developed assessing environmental responsibility based on Maloney and Ward (1973), the Lemming’s and Dwyer’s questionnaire (1995) and the theory of attitudes In the second phase was examined the structure of scales: a) perceived information, b) cognitive dimension,
c) affective dimension and d) disposition to environmental action by conducting exploratory factor analysis and then confirmatory factor analysis. The results supported the construct validity, the reliability and the final form of four scales. Correlation analysis revealed high and positive relationships between variables. The second study was conducted on a sample of 262 secondary school students (135 girls and 127 boys) to reexamine the construct validity of the four developed scales. The results of confirmatory factor
analyses supported one dimensional structure for the three scales of: a) perceived information (9 items), b) cognitive dimension (8 items) c) emotional dimension (8 items) and the existence of two-dimensions for the disposition scale: a) disposition for individual action (5 items) and b) disposition to encourage others (3 items). Findings aimed to facilitate future studies assessing the level of environmental responsibility in secondary school students, and understanding the factors that influence and shape environmental behavior.