Designing, Testing, and Validating an Attitudinal Survey on an Environmental Topic: A Groundwater Pollution Survey Instrument for Secondary School Students

Research in environmental attitudes' assessment has significantly increased in recent years. The development of specific attitude scales for specific environmental problems has often been proposed. This paper describes the Groundwater Pollution Test (GPT), a 19-item survey instrument using a Likert-type scale. The survey has been used with 14-16-year-old Spanish chemistry students to evaluate their attitudes toward groundwater pollution. Reliability is established by estimation of the internal consistency of the scale and by means of test-retest replication. Detailed information on validity is provided by means of exploratory factor analysis. A total of 323 students were involved in the research. The factor analysis revealed three specific factors that comprise environmental attitudes to groundwater pollution: sources and effects of pollution; personal actions and pollution; and awareness of pollution. The GPT is useful for assessing the attitudes of a group of students toward groundwater pollution, comparing the attitudes of different groups, and evaluating changes in attitudes over time or after specific teaching activities. In addition, the GPT can be used to identify differences in water use among students from different cultural backgrounds. Teachers concerned about environmental degradation can design specific tasks to improve students' understanding of the hazards of groundwater pollution. (Contains 1 table.)