Developing a Scale for Attitudes toward the Environment

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable Likert- type scale to measure the attitudes of pre-service teachers toward the environment. A 30-item draft attitude scale was applied to 366 pre-service teachers who had attended fundamental physics, chemistry and biology courses (some of them had attended ecology courses) at the Education and Science- Art Faculties at Dicle University during 2002- 2003 spring term. To test the validity of the scale and find out its sub-dimensions, a factor analysis was used and five sub-dimensions were found. The first dimension measured anxiety, the second dimension measured enjoyment, the third dimension measured participation, the fourth dimensions measured the importance of the environment and fifth measured the students’ interest for environmental education. The Kaiser-Meyer- Olkin (KMO) value was 0.84 and the Barlett Test value was 1124.6. The reliability Cofficient (Cronbach alpha) for the whole scale was found to be 0.88. The Cronchbach alpha values for the sub- dimensions were 0.74, 0.77, 0.64, 0.66, and 0.53 respectively.