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

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

Lois Player  1 , Paul H P Hanel  2 , Lorraine Whitmarsh  1   3 , Punit Shah  1
Affiliations

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

Lois Player et al. Heliyon. .

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Item information curves for all Environmental Knowledge Test items.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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