Irene Chattopadhyay Debdulal Dutta Roy
Adamas University, Kolkata Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
Pages:44-50
Pro-environmental attitude and behaviour are related to mental health. Aim of this study
is to examine pro-environmental attitude with respect to environmental sensitivity and
recycling. Environmental sensitivity refers to acute mental and physical responses to
changes in the external environment, while, recycling measures attitude towards the
recovery and reprocessing of waste materials for use in new products. An item-pool of 30
items was constructed after literature review, which was evaluated and modified on the
basis of Thurstone and Chave’s (1929) criteria. From here, 20 statements were selected
and administered randomly to environmentally conscious experts via a Google form.
Results indicated that the experts consistently selected items which contained words
already present in the operational definition, thereby suggesting good face validity and
high intensity of the item’s relevance to the operational definition. Items having keywords
“recycling”, “sustainability”, “conservation”, received a higher mean. It was also noted
that the items which complemented the operational definition, yielded a higher average
rating and lower within-group variability among the experts. Findings of this study can
be used to construct an environmental attitude scale and further analyse the scale’s
reliability and validity.
Keywords: item construction, face validity, environmental sensitivity, recycling