Construction and evaluation of scales for assessing environmental concern (3(rd), revised version)

Describes the revision (item pool and dimensions) and evaluation of a set o f (German language) scales for assessing individual environmental attitudes , behavioral intentions, and self-reported behavior. Besides belonging to o ne of these three scales. each item is included one of seven scales measuri ng environmentally relevant content areas (factet approach). The revision w as carried our according to the principles of the classical approach to tes t construction. Furthermore, a global scale and four different. unidimensio nal short forms of the global scale were constructed. Results are presented using questionnaire responses from various samples (n = 12 psychological a nd n = 22 environmental expert: n = 104 subjects who belong to conservation groups; n = 203 subjects who do not belong to conservation groups. n = 64 students with three peer-ratings for each subject; each sample comprised Ge rman female and male adults). Homogeneity, retest reliability over approx. 5.5 weeks. correlations among scales, and different indicators of validity are reported. These results demonstrate the quality of the constructed scal es and indicate their usefulness fur scientific research. The best global s hort scale according to the various indicators was the seale whose selectio n criterion had been the correlation between self- and peer-ratings.