Construction And Validation Of The ‘Children’s Connectedness To Nature’ Instrument

Abstract

Developing a connectedness to nature (CTN) during childhood is important, as it affects children’s attitude and behaviour towards nature in later childhood and adulthood. Hence, it is crucial to measure children’s CTN at an early age. Several instruments have been introduced to measure children’s CTN based on adults’ instruments. However, the conceptualisation of CTN and its underlying constructs among children remain unclear. Previous instruments have measured children’s CTN using various constructs with one or a combination of two or three psychological domains that include the cognitive, affective, and behavioural domains. As scholars have suggested that CTN should be measured using a combination of three domains: thus, this study aims to develop a reliable and valid instrument to measure children’s CTN based on the three domains. Surveys were distributed to 760 children aged 10 and 11 years old in 20 public primary schools (urban and rural areas) in Kedah and Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. Reliability tests and validity analysis indicated that the new developed instrument was reliable and valid to measure children’s CTN. This study has shown that CTN among children should be measured using the cognitive, affective, and behavioural domain. The constructs involved are empathy towards nature, sense of responsibility, enjoyment in nature, dependence on nature, interest in nature activities, and interest in natural spaces. This newly developed instrument can be used to measure children’s CTN at an early age as part of environmental education or green-module programmes in schools. The directions for future research are also discussed.

Keywords: Children, connectedness to nature, instrument, construction, validation

Introduction

Studies have shown that an individual’s disposition towards nature or connectedness to nature (CTN) plays an important role in developing a positive attitude and behaviour towards the environment as a child now and later as an adult (Cheng & Monroe, 2010; Duerden & Witt, 2010; Zhang, Goodale, & Chen, 2014). CTN has been found to be associated positively with a specific attitude towards nature and landscape (Tang, Sullivan, & Chang, 2014). A recent study has found that people with high CTN plant more trees in their gardens and spend more time there (Lin et al., 2017). Most importantly, retrospective studies have shown that CTN developed in childhood has long-term effects that continue in adulthood. CTN developed in childhood influences environmental career choices, environmental concern, and use of green areas in adulthood (Thompson, Aspinall, & Montarzino, 2007). Hence, it is difficult to ignore the importance of children’s CTN, as it affects their attitudes and behaviour towards the environment and nature throughout life. CTN should be nurtured, developed, and measured at an early age, specifically during middle childhood (7 to 12 years old) since children explore the outdoor environment extensively and develop their identity by interacting with natural surroundings at this age (Kellert, 2005).

Problem Statement

Scholars have introduced various instruments to measure children’s CTN. However, previous instruments have measured CTN in various concepts and constructs that involved three psychological domains that include the cognitive, affective, and behavioural domains. Some researchers have conceptualised and measured CTN in only one domain, while others have used two or three domains (Mustapa, Maliki, Aziz, & Hamzah, 2016). Question arises as to which one is more reliable. Several scholars have suggested that the uni-dimensional approach is limited in its ability to reflect attitudes and behaviour, whereas the multi-dimensional approach is more reliable in measuring CTN, as it performs better to predict behaviour (Restall & Conrad, 2015). These indicate that conceptualization of CTN in only one or two domains may have limitations in reflecting children’s CTN. Hence, this study has conceptualized and measured CTN in three psychological domains (cognitive, affective, and behavioural), as suggested by Schultz (2002). Furthermore, several researchers have suggested that people from different cultures respond differently towards nature (Milfont, 2012). Therefore, this study aims to develop a CTN instrument that is valid, reliable and child-friendly, to be used specifically among Malaysian children, based on previous instruments.

Research Questions

• Do cognitive, affective, and behavioural domains reflect children’s connectedness to nature?
• Do nature awareness, environmental identity, enjoyment in nature, empathy towards nature, interest in nature activities, and interest in natural spaces constructs reflect children’s connectedness to nature?

Purpose of the Study

This study aims to develop a reliable and valid instrument to measure children’s CTN specifically to be used among Malaysian children.

Research Methods

Findings

Measures of sampling adequacy, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test and Bartlett’s test of sphericity, were first performed to confirm that factor analysis was appropriate. The value for the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test was 0.83 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was 0.000. Both measures confirmed that factor analysis was suitable. Subsequently, factor analysis was conducted. At first, seven components were derived from the results with eigenvalues greater than 1, explaining 17.91%, 8.12%, 5.96%, 5.18%, 4.68%, 4.24% and 4.03% of the variance respectively. However, one of the components had only two items (items 3 and 4). Also, based on the researchers’ judgement, some of the items did not fall under suitable constructs. Thus, the researchers explored the factor structure with six components and the items fell under suitable constructs. One item (item 15) needed to be deleted because it did not load on any construct (see Table 1). Thus, of the original 28 items, only 27 items remained.

The six components explained a total variance of 46.09%, with component 1 contributing 17.91%, component 2 contributing 8.12%, component 3 contributing 5.95%, component 4 contributing 5.18%, component 5 contributing 4.58% and component 6 contributing 4.24%. The components were named based on the item with the most significant loading. Component 1 was thus named “empathy towards nature”, component 2 was named “sense of responsibility”, component 3 was named “enjoyment in nature”, component 4 was named “dependence on nature”, component 5 was named “interest in natural spaces” and component 6 was named “interest in nature activities”. Environmental identity items did not have the highest loadings on any construct: thus, environmental identity was not one of the constructs to be named. This supports the findings from the pre-test, which indicated that children find it difficult to understand the concept of themselves being part of nature (environmental identity).

A reliability test was then conducted for each construct. For component 6 (interest in nature activities), item 18 needed to be deleted to achieve a higher Cronbach’s Alpha value. Twenty-six items remained, as listed in Table 2. The Cronbach’s alpha values for each construct were acceptable, as they were all 0.6 and above (see Table 2). Even though five of the constructs had the lowest acceptable value, which is 0.6, the inter-correlation values for all items were 0.3 and above. This indicates that the constructs derived and the instrument are reliable (Pallant, 2013). Moreover, this is a newly developed instrument: therefore, its Cronbach’s alpha value is acceptable.

Conclusion

The findings of the present study have revealed that there are six underlying constructs that can be used to measure children’s CTN, namely empathy towards nature, sense of responsibility, enjoyment in nature, dependence on nature, interest in natural spaces, and interest in nature activities. Four of the constructs (empathy towards nature, enjoyment in nature, interest in natural spaces, and interest in nature activities) are similar to those found in previous studies examined in the literature review. However, two of the constructs were named differently according to the highest loading items. These two constructs were named as nature dependence and sense of responsibility. Sense of responsibility refers to children’s beliefs about taking care of nature, whereas nature dependence refers to children’s beliefs about their dependency on nature. Although two of the constructs (nature dependence and sense of responsibility) were named differently from previous studies, these findings support previous studies that suggested that CTN can be measured through nature awareness (dependence on nature and sense of responsibility), empathy towards nature, enjoyment in nature, interest in natural spaces and interest in nature activities.

Interestingly, environmental identity items do not have the highest loading: therefore, environmental identity is not one of the constructs to be named in this study. This finding indicates that children did not see themselves as part of nature and had difficulty understanding the abstract ideas in the environmental identity construct. This can be explained by the fact that children at middle childhood age are in the concrete operational stage and find it difficult to understand abstract ideas, and they comprehend nature in a direct manner in terms of what they see. Hence, it can be concluded that CTN among children needs to be measured using direct statements that can be understood by the children and at the same time reflect their CTN. Another possible explanation for this finding might be related to cultural differences, as people from different cultures response differently towards nature (Milfont, 2012).

These findings further confirm that CTN can be conceptualised as a disposition towards nature that can be measured using three psychological domains, namely the cognitive, affective, and behavioural (Schultz, 2002). The findings also support the contention that children’s CTN should be measured using a multi-dimensional approach. These findings corroborate the ideas of Restall and Conrad (2015), who suggested that a multi-dimensional approach is more reliable when measuring CTN. Measuring children’s CTN in only one domain leads to limitations in understanding children’s CTN. This newly developed instrument has combined all three domains and the findings suggest that it is a reliable instrument that can be used to measure CTN among children, as the Cronbach’s Alpha values for each construct were acceptable.

In conclusion, this study provides several insights on the conceptualization and measurement of children’s CTN. First, it adds to a growing body of literature on the constructs underlying children’s CTN. Second, it extends the knowledge that CTN should be measured through three psychological domains: cognitive, affective and behavioural. Third, this study has made an important contribution to the development of a CTN instrument that is reliable and psychometrically sound to be used among children. This CTN instrument helps practitioners in the educational field to measure children’s CTN at an early age. Future research should test this instrument using a Likert scale with different points as it might increase the reliability of this instrument, as well as employed Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to validate the constructs. Finally, further exploration using qualitative approach would be an advantage to validate the constructs of this instrument.

Acknowledgments

This paper is part of PhD thesis entitled from School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia with support funding from Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) and MyPhD scholarship under the Ministry of Education (MOE). Many thanks also to Universiti Malaysia Kelantan for the continuous support.

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