The 19-Item Environmental Knowledge Test (EKT-19): A short, psychometrically robust measure of environmental knowledge

Lois Player; Paul H P Hanel; Lorraine Whitmarsh; Punit Shah

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17862

The 19-Item Environmental Knowledge Test (EKT-19): A short, psychometrically robust measure of environmental knowledge

Heliyon. 2023 Jun 30;9(8):e17862. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17862. eCollection 2023 Aug.

Authors

Lois Player¹, Paul H P Hanel², Lorraine Whitmarsh^{1

3}, Punit Shah¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK.
² Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK.
³ Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3AT, UK.

Abstract

Environmental knowledge is considered an important pre-cursor to pro-environmental behaviour. Though several tools have been designed to measure environmental knowledge, there remains no concise, psychometrically grounded measure. We validated an existing measure in a British sample, confirming that it had good one- and three-factor structures in line with previous literature. For the first time in this field, we built upon previous Classical Test Theory approaches and used discrimination values derived from Item Response Theory to select the best items, resulting in the 19-Item Environmental Knowledge Test (EKT-19). This measure retained a clear factor structure and had moderate-to-good internal reliability, indicating that it is a parsimonious and psychometrically robust measure for the assessment of overall and specific types of environmental knowledge. The theoretical implications and real-world applications of this measure are discussed.

Keywords: Environmental knowledge; Factor analysis; Item response theory; Psychometrics; Self-report.