Development and Validation of an Instrument for Assessing Climate Change Knowledge and Perceptions: The Climate Stewardship Survey (CSS)

Year 2013, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 57 - 73, 14.01.2013

Scott Walker , Karen Mcneal

Abstract

The Climate Stewardship Survey (CSS) was developed to measure knowledge and perceptions of global climate change, while also considering information sources that respondents ‘trust.’ The CSS was drafted using a three-stage approach: development of salient scales, writing individual items, and field testing and analyses. Construct validity and alpha-level reliability was conducted on the 122-item test instrument to produce a refined 84-item CSS.  The field tested CSS includes five scales (1) Impacts of Climate Change, (2) Causes of Climate Change  (3) Misunderstandings about Climate Change  (4) Issues  and (5) Policy.  Four knowledge dimension sub-scales and seven perception dimension sub-scales scales are included in the accepted instrument. The CSS is particularly applicable to studies interested in measuring potential respondent’s ideas on the impacts, causes, and misunderstandings that are important to global climate change knowledge and perceptions as they relate specifically toward climate change issues and policy.

Keywords

Climate stewardship survey, CSS, climate change knowledge and perceptions

References

• Ambrose, J. (2011, June 9). Ambrose: Warming skeptics are not ‘deniers.’ Scripps News. Retrieved from http://www.scrippsnews.com/content/ambrose-warming-skeptics-are-not-deniers
• Bedford, D. (2010). Agnotology as a teaching tool: Learning climate science by studying misinformation. Journal of Geography, 109(4): 159-165.
• Boon, H. (2009). Climate change? When? Where? The Australian Educational Researcher, 36(3), 43-46.
• Borberg, J., Cone, J., Jodice, L., Harte, M., & Corcoran, P. (2009). An analysis of a survey of Oregon Coast decision makers regarding climate change (Oregon Sea Grant Publication No. ORESU-S-09-001). Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University.
• Brody, S. D., Zahran, S., Vedlitz, A., & Grover, H. (2008). Examining the relationship between physical vulnerability and public perceptions of global climate change in the United States. Environment and Behavior, 40(1), 72-95. doi: 10.1177/0013916506298800
• Carlson, R. (1962). Silent spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Chapman, P. (2008, April 23). Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh. The Australian. Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sorry-to-ruin-the-fun-but-an-ice-age-cometh/story-e6frg73o- 1111116134873
• Dunlap, R. E., & McCright, A. M. (2008). A widening gap: Republican and Democratic views on climate change. Environment, 50(5), 26-35.
• Fraser, B. J. (1986). Classroom environment. London: Croom Helm.
• Jeager, R. M. (1993). Statistics: A spectator sport (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications.
• Jegede, O., Fraser, B. J., & Fisher, D. L. (1998, April). The Distance and Open Learning Environment Scale: Its development, validation and use. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, San Diego, CA.
• Hase, H. D., & Goldberg, L. R. (1967). Comparative validity of different strategies of constructing personality inventory scales. Psychological Bulletin, 67, 231-248.
• Kempton, W. (1991). Lay perspectives on global climate change. Global Environmental Change, 1(3), 183- 208. doi: 10.1016/0959-3780(91)90042-R
• Leiserowitz, A., Smith, N., & Marlon, J. R. (2010) Americans’ knowledge of climate change. Yale University. New Haven, CT: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Retrieved from http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/ClimateChangeKnowledge2010.pdf
• Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology (F. Heider & G. M. Heider, Trans.). New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
• Heath, Y., & Gifford, R. (2006). Free-market ideology and environmental degradation: The case of belief in global climate change. Environment and behavior, 38(1), 48-71. doi: 10.1177/0013916505277998
• Heffron, S. G., & Valmond, K. (2011). Teaching about global climate change. The Geography Teacher, 8(2), 91-95.
• Maloney, M. P., & Ward, M. P. (1973). Ecology: Let's hear from the people: An objective scale for the measurement of ecological attitudes and knowledge. American Psychologist, 28(7), 583-586. doi: 10.1037/h0034936
• Murdoch, D. (2008, May 1). Globe may be cooling on global warming. Scripps News. Retrieved from http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/32821
• Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of fifty men of college age. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. (2009). Fewer Americans see solid evidence of global warming: Modest support for "cap and trade" policy. Retrieved from http://people- press.org/files/legacy-pdf/556.pdf
• Proctor, R. N., & Schiebinger, L. (Eds.). (2008). Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ingnorance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Pugliese, A., & Lyons, L. (2010, 13 October). Australians' views shift on climate change; fewer believe climate change results from human activities. Gallup Poll News Service.
• Read, D., Bostrom, A., Morgan, M. G., Fischhoff, B., & Smuts, T. (1994). What do people know about global climate change? 2. Survey studies of educated laypeople. Risk Analysis, 14(6), 971-982.
• Reynolds, T. W., Bostrom, A., Read, D., & Morgan, M. G. (2010). Now what do people know about global climate change? Survey study of educated laypeople. Risk Analysis, 30(10), 1520-1538.
• Schwartz, S. A. (2011). The Antique Roadshow: How denier movements debunk evolution, climate change, and nonlocal consciousness. NeuroQuantology, 9(1), 118-128.
• Sundblad, E-L., Biel, A., & Gärling, T. (2009). Knowledge and confidence in knowledge about climate change among experts, journalists, politicians, and laypersons. Environment and Behavior, 41(2), 281-302.
• Walker, S. L., & Fraser, B. J. (2005). Development and validation of an instrument for assessing distance education learning environments in higher education: The Distance Education Learning Environments 10.1007/s10984-005-1568-3 (DELES). Learning Environments Research, 8, 289-308. doi:
• Wohlwill, J. F. (1970). The emerging discipline of environmental psychology. American Psychologist, 25(4), 303-312. Appendix A
• SourceT 71 .724 Role 72 Role 73 Role 74 Role 75 Role 76 EnvQual 77 EnvQual 78 EnvQual 79 Priority 80 Priority 81 Priority 82 Priority 83 Priority 84
• % Variance 14.28 14.21 7.40 4.84 4.39 4.39 4.05 3.71 3.28 2.88 2.71
• N=122; Principal component extraction; Varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization. Factor loadings smaller
• than 0.45 have been omitted. Sub-scales with poor reliability have been omitted.