Abstract
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.
Highlights
The Aboriginal people are well-known as a community that is innately close to the environment or nature (Department of the Indigenous Affairs, 2011; Salleh, 2012; Jelas, Ahmad & Ayudin, 2009)
Research Findings Exploratory Factor Analysis for Intrinsic Factors For intrinsic factors, a total of 21 items was identified. These 21 items were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) using SPSS version 23
These items were dropped from the questionnaire, and 18 items remained for intrinsic factors
Summary
The Aboriginal people are well-known as a community that is innately close to the environment or nature (Department of the Indigenous Affairs, 2011; Salleh, 2012; Jelas, Ahmad & Ayudin, 2009). The changes in the lifestyles of the aboriginal community today have led to changes in terms of their way of thinking, attitude and behavior especially among the younger generation of the aboriginal community (Nicholas & Lasimbang, 2004). The Aboriginal community/aboriginal community only used natural resources for their daily needs, but this has changed where presently the exploration of environmental resources is carried out more for commercial or economic value (Chopil & Hunt, 2009; Nicholas & Lasimbang, 2004). The theory of environmental behavior is more general and does not take into account the background of the respondents involved (Ajzen, 2005; Emmons 1997; Stern 2000) especially aboriginal students who have presently undergone changes in terms of social and economic aspects
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