Attitudes Towards the Environment Scale for Primary School Fourth Grade Students: The Study of Validity and Reliability

The purpose of this study is to develop a measuring tool so as to determine the attitudes towards environment for primay school fourth grade students. Separate data groups were used for Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis at the developing the ‘Attitudes Towards the Environment Scale’. Accordingly, in the Second term of 2018-2019 academic year, Exploratory Factor Analysiswas carried out with 167 fourth grade primary school students from Kartepe District and Confirmatory Factor Analysiswas carried out with 325 fourth grade primary school students from Izmit District of Kocaeli Province.In the process of Exploratory Factor Analysis, Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin and Barlett tests were used to check whether data structure was suitable for factor analysis for practice scale. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test result was ,877 and Barlett test result was 1623,380 (p<,01) for the Scale. As a result of the Exploratory Factor Analysis, the reliability coefficient of the scale consisting of 3 factors and 15 items was found to be Cronbach’s Alpha ,871 and it was seen that three dimensions of the scale represented %54,99 of total variance. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was carried out in another group for the purpose of examining the validity of the Scale. According to the results of the analysis using Satorra-Bentler Maximum Likelihood Estimation Method, goodness of fit indices of the scale (S-B χ²/sd=2,970;  RMSEA= ,039; CFI= ,93; IFI=,94; TLI=,92; MFI=,93) were within acceptable values. Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was found ,887 for the entire scale; ,820 for the first factor; ,758 for the second factor; ,716 for the third factor. These findings indicate that the Attitude Towards the Environment Scale’s construct obtained from the Exploratory Factor Analysis has been confirmed with Confirmatory Factor Analysis. In the analysis made in the student  group where the Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed, it was revealed that female students had a more positive attitude towards the environment than male students, and there was no significant diference according to the their ages.

Keywords

Primary Education, Environment, Environmental Education, Attitudes Towards the Environment, Primary School, Primary School Students