Development and validation of an instrument for assessing attitudes of high school students about recycling

Recycling and its applications are growing significantly due to the great potential for solving a range of environmental problems in society. Nevertheless, there are currently very few instruments that can provide valid and reliable data on students' attitudes toward recycling. In this regard,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental education research 2015-08, Vol.21 (6), p.916-942
Main Author: Ugulu, Ilker
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude Measures
attitudes
Content Analysis
Discriminant analysis
Environmental Education
Factor Analysis
Factor Structure
Foreign Countries
Grade 10
Grade 11
High School Students
Likert scale
Likert Scales
Recycling
Reliability
scale development
Secondary school students
Student Attitudes
Turkey
Validation studies
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Summary:Recycling and its applications are growing significantly due to the great potential for solving a range of environmental problems in society. Nevertheless, there are currently very few instruments that can provide valid and reliable data on students' attitudes toward recycling. In this regard, this article focuses on the development and validation of Recycling Attitude Scale (RAS). The items in the RAS were developed initially from the responses to three open-ended items by 53 tenth and eleventh grade students and literature review on recycling attitude. This initial form was pilot tested with 356 tenth and eleventh grade students and then subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Subsequently, the revised version of the scale was administrated to 694 tenth grade students, and the results were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis. The RAS consists of 21 items in three subscales, with responses recorded on a four-point Likert scale, options ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient (α) of the scale was found to be .87. The results indicate that the RAS a potentially valuable tool for both instructors and researchers in Turkey for the assessment of the attitudes toward recycling held by students in secondary education.
ISSN:1350-4622
1469-5871
DOI:10.1080/13504622.2014.923381