Development and Validation of a Scale: Assessing Secondary School Students’ Pro-Environmental Behviour and Attitudes

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to develop and validate an instrument to assess levels of Pro Environmental Behavior and Attitudes (PEB) of grade 8 and 10 students in the Sri Lankan context. First, related previous studies and related scales were studied and an item pool was established. Relevant common items were identified in different scales and some items were moderated or redesigned to make them more suitable for grade 8 and 10 students in the Sri Lankan context. The first draft of the questionnaire containing 45 items was reviewed by a panel of experts and according to the expert recommendation, 5 items were eliminated. The final questionnaire was based on a five-point Likert scale (Strongly disagree - 1 to Strongly agree - 5) was administered to a randomly selected 972 (529 male and 443 female) students. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with varimax rotation were used. Adequacy of sample size for EFA was tested by the Kaiser-Meyer- Olkin (KMO) and Barlett Sphericity tests (0.714). Reliability analysis was done using the Cronbach Alpha coefficient (0.894) for the whole scale. The final version of the scale contained 32 items that explain 49.7 of total variance with six factors (i.e., Household behavior - 8 items; Civic action - 5 items; Recycling behavior - 6 items; Environmental Sensitivity-5 items; Environmental Awareness - 4 items and Environmental values - 4 items). The final scale consists of 32 items proved to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing attitudes and behavior of junior secondary students in the Sri Lankan context.