International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

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Developing of an Environmental Literacy Instrument: In the Context of Aboriginal Students

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Environmental literacy instruments developed by previous researchers do not take into account the background of the younger generation of aboriginal students who have undergone a change in the social and economic aspects of the present day. In response, this study aimed to develop an environmental literacy instrument in the context of indigenous students in Malaysia. The instrument development in this study involved five stages, namely conducting analysis of literature review, performing expert validation, carrying out a pre-test, conducting exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and performing reliability analysis. In this study, the 56-itemsurvey consists of 20 questions on knowledge about the environment, 21 items on environmental intrinsic factors and 15 items on environmental behavior. The questionnaire was administered to 400 indigenous students at the primary and secondary school level (ages 11 to 14 years old). Exploratory factor analysis indicated that the 25 items on intrinsic factors were grouped into four factors, namely attitude, locus of control, personal responsibility and environmental beliefs. The Kuder-Richarson for knowledge about the environment was 0.60 while the Cronbach’s alpha values for intrinsic factors were .802 for attitude,.705 for locus of control, .708 for environmental beliefs and .703 for personal responsibility. The Cronbach’s alpha value for environmental behavior was .882. This instrument is helpful in research and evaluation that is aimed at measuring environmental literacy for environmental conservation in the context of indigenous students.
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In-Text Citation: (Rahman, 2019)
To Cite this Article: Rahman, N. A. (2019). Developing of an Environmental Literacy Instrument: In the Context of Aboriginal Students. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(7), 743–760.