Development and validation of an instrument for measuring action competence in sustainable development within early adolescents: the action competence in sustainable development questionnaire (ACiSD-Q)

Abstract

Action competence consists of the knowledge, willingness, and self-efficacy for contributing to a controversial issue such as sustainable development. As such, action competence in sustainable development (ACiSD) is a desired outcome of education for sustainable development (ESD). Still, the scarce instruments for measuring ACiSD that have been developed to date, are not specifically designed for early adolescence, when civic involvement is developed. Therefore, this study reports on the development of such a measurement instrument: the Action Competence in Sustainable Development Questionnaire (ACiSD-Q). A mixed-method approach in four steps used three different samples: after a literature review (step 1), early adolescents (n = 75) informed the generation of an initial item pool (step 2; qualitative). After assessment of the scale’s content validity it was administered to a second sample (n = 403) to test psychometric properties (step 3; quantitative). Finally, rigorous statistical analyses (third sample, n = 1796) confirmed the proposed structure, reliability, construct, and predictive validity of the final ACiSD-Q (step 4; quantitative). Our findings support a valid and reliable third-order model, fit for monitoring ESD efforts that aim to enhance early adolescents’ action competence in sustainable development.

Keywords:

• Action competence
• sustainable behavior
• validation
• action competence in sustainable development questionnaire (ACiSD-Q)
• early adolescents

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all participating schools and respondents for their constructive cooperation and feedback. We thoroughly appreciated the feedback and comments on the initial draft of the questionnaire received from the members of the VALIES advisory board and core team, and by Gaby Abbema and Staf Boeve-de Pauw. We are grateful for the help of all working students and colleagues involved in the data collections and digitalization of paper questionnaires for steps three and four. Finally, feedback received from the journal’s editor and anonymous reviewers’ was greatly appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was part of the VALIES project and was supported by the Flanders Research Foundation (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, FWO) under Grant number S010317N within the Strategic Basic Research program.