Environmental awareness and worry among high school teachers in Kuwait

Industrialization has provided humanity with many material and social benefits. Unfortunately, it has also brought about many material and social problems, one of which is environmental pollution that nowadays poses a major threat not only to humans, but also to all life on earth. The aim of the present study is to assess the level of environmental awareness among high school teachers in Kuwait; to study the extent of their environmental worry; and to evaluate the relationship between their environmental awareness and worry, and how they vary with different socio-demographic variables. A cross sectional study of 461 high school teachers was conducted using a random multistage cluster sample design. The target population comprised public high school teachers (males and females) in 2 governorates, Hawalli and Ahmadi. Data collection was performed using a structured anonymous self-administered questionnaire covering the environmental awareness and environmental worry checklists. The sample involved 499 teachers. About 60% of the teachers had high level of environmental awareness and almost half of them had high level of environmental worry. Both scores increased with increasing age, years of experience, level of education of the spouse, presence of children and being non-Kuwaiti. Males scored higher in both scores, but the difference was only significant in the part concerning environmental worry. The level of teachers' environmental worry was significantly positively related to their environmental awareness.