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Reliability of the Children's Attitudes Toward the Environment Scale
Sang-Min Kim1, Catherine Zeman, Olga Kostareva
1Department of Health Promotion Program, Winona State University, Winona, MN 55987, USA.
Psychological Reports
|October 26, 2007
Summary
This study evaluated the Children's Attitudes toward the Environment Scale. While internal consistency was acceptable, test-retest reliability was low, suggesting potential issues with stability over time for environmental attitude measurement.
Area of Science:
- Environmental psychology
- Educational assessment
- Child development
Background:
- The Children's Attitudes toward the Environment Scale (Musser & Malkus, 1994) is used to measure environmental attitudes in children.
- Assessing the psychometric properties of such scales is crucial for reliable data collection.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the reliability of the Children's Attitudes toward the Environment Scale.
- To determine the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the scale in a sample of children.
Main Methods:
- The study administered the Children's Attitudes toward the Environment Scale to 274 children.
- Cronbach's alpha was calculated for pretest and 3-week follow-up.
- Test-retest reliability was assessed using the correlation coefficient (r).
Main Results:
- Cronbach's alpha values were .73 (pretest) and .83 (3-week follow-up), indicating acceptable internal consistency.
- The test-retest reliability coefficient was .47, which is considered low.
Conclusions:
- The scale demonstrates adequate internal consistency for measuring children's environmental attitudes at a single point in time.
- The low test-retest reliability suggests that the scale's measurements may not be stable over a short period, warranting caution in longitudinal interpretations.
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