A COSMIN systematic review of the psychometric properties of instruments that measure climate change-related distress

Awareness of the climate crisis has been linked to a range of distressing emotions and multiple measurement tools have been created to assess climate change-related distress. A systematic review of psychometric properties of climate-related distress measures was conducted following the Consensus-based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) guidelines. Forty-four studies assessing seven measures were evaluated based on their results and the methodological quality of the studies testing each psychometric property. The measures varied with regard to the climate-related distress construct they assessed. Content validity was poor for most measures due to the methods of their development and strict COSMIN criteria; an exception was the Eco-Anxiety Questionnaire, which had promising results but was only assessed in one study. Most of the studies (n = 29) evaluated the Climate Change Anxiety Scale, which had inconsistent results for structural validity, but was the only measure to have some evidence of cross-cultural validity. Selection of a measure should be informed by the construct of interest to the researcher or clinician, or other features of the measure. Further research is required in different subgroups, across cultures, evaluating more psychometric properties in higher quality studies. All measures would benefit from improvements in content validity.