Developing and validating an assessment tool to measure climate change knowledge among middle school students: preliminary findings in a Spanish context

Abstract

Considering the crucial role of education in offering mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change, there is a clear need for objective tools to assess its impact on the understanding of the issue among secondary school students. This paper describes the methodological design used to build and validate an instrument that explores secondary education students’ climate change knowledge. The design is organized into several steps: literature and document review; item design; Expert judgment; pilot testing; and instrument quality criteria analysis. Thus, a questionnaire comprising 27 4-points Likert scale items was designed. Two rounds of pilot testing and statistical analyses were conducted on the difficulty indexes, factor analysis, Spearman coefficient (flit-half method), and alpha coefficient. The result is an instrument with a degree of feasibility, validity and reliability suitable for comparative research as was found in a Spanish macro-study involving 6398 secondary school students. Preliminary results for the Spanish context are offered.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• climate change
• climate literacy
• environmental education
• questionnaire validation
• secondary education

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Ref.: PID2022-136933OB-C21. Thanks to all the students and teachers who made this study possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These three scientific journals have dedicated special issues to climate change education.