The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale adapted for use with children (NEP-C) is one of the most frequently used measures of children's environmental beliefs. Though widely utilized, the limitations of the NEP-C instrument are often overlooked. Based on a systematic synthesis of existing literature examining the NEP-C, we argue that the scale…

The Children's New Ecological Paradigms scale was originally developed for children ages 10-12 and was presented as valuable for comparing that age group with older participants. This study uses cognitive interviews and measurement invariance testing to investigate how well the scores maintain the same meaning between these two age groups. The…

Researchers have long aimed to quantify environmental attitudes, subsequently incorporating them into more comprehensive models of values, attitudes, and behaviors. However, many metrics, notably the New Environmental Paradigm scale, conflate a situated, incomplete set of environmental attitudes with pro-environmental worldviews generally.…

An empirical investigation assessed the role of different factors of motivational, behavioral, and dispositional nature in the prediction of both perceived and actual skills concerning household waste recycling. A structured questionnaire (measuring attitudes, social norms, perceived control, need for cognitive closure, self-reported household…

Higher education is increasingly interested in its impact on the sustainability attributes of its students, so we wanted to explore how our students' environmental concern changed during their higher education experiences. We used the Revised New Ecological Paradigm Scale (NEP) with 505 students and developed and tested a multinomial…

Environmental education programs aiming to enhance children's environmental attitudes in a pro-environmental direction require background information, such as age and sex differences, to ensure appropriate design. We used the 2-MEV model with its domains "preservation" and "utilization" of nature to assess a four-day program at…

The Environmental Motives Scale (EMS) was developed to measure an individual's concerns about environmental issues. The measure provides subscale scores for egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric concerns. Prior studies have shown a good fit for the 3-factor structure, but the measure has yet to be used with children. In this paper we report…

A Chinese version of the revised NEP Scale was generated and adopted in a survey among 507 students (age 10 to 12 years old) from three elementary schools in Shenzhen, China. The results show an acceptable level of internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.65) but some abnormalities on the modified NEP scale: items 1 and 7 presented very low…

Are adolescents' environmental attitudes similar to their parents' attitudes? The main objective of this study is to examine what quantitative associations, if any, exist in parent-child environmental attitudes within the family. The survey data was collected assessing attitudes toward the environment and nature from 15-year-old students (n = 237)…

While numerous quantitative studies across disciplines have investigated children's knowledge and attitudes about environmental problems, few studies examine children's feelings about environmental problems--and even fewer have focused on the child's point of view. Through 50 in-depth interviews with urban children (ages 10-12) this research aimed…

This exploratory study investigated elementary teachers' beliefs about, perceived competencies for, and reported use of scientific inquiry to promote students' learning "about" environmental issues and "for" environmental decision making and action. Data were collected through a questionnaire administered to a simple random sample of elementary…

Narrative film is a multimodal, multisensual, and universal medium that has potential to reach and influence a wide range of people regarding environmental issues. The author conducted an experiment to explore the impact of film portrayals of deforestation among college students. One-hundred eighty-one undergraduate students were randomly assigned…

The term environment-based education (EBE) describes a form of school-based environmental education that uses the environment as a context for integrating subjects and a source of real-world learning experiences. Because of the importance of administrator support in teachers' use of EBE (Ernst, 2009), survey research was conducted to explore…

Outdoor recreation participation has increased over the past decades and is projected for further growth. Given the increase, it is important to assess recreationists' environmental values, activity style, general, and site-specific attitudes and behaviors to promote environmental stewardship, and to develop effective strategies in natural…

Describes the development and validation of 20 survey items that measure environmental-issue attitudes. Measures demographics, ecological knowledge, and self-reported changes in behavior toward the environment. (Author/CCM)