Factor analysis and consensus contributing to undergraduate students’ ecoliteracy on disaster risk reduction

Abstract

Ecoliteracy implies a holistic understanding of the relationship between environment and disaster. Strengthening ecoliteracy in educational institutions is the first step in building disaster-aware communities. This pilot study aims to explore the perspective of students’ ecoliteracy on disaster mitigation while examining the set of Q statements as research instruments. This study applies the Q methodology since it has components that can measure the diversity of human subjectivity. Fourteen undergraduate students at the Faculty of Geography, Universitas Gadjah Mada, were selected as participants. The results construct five factors and two consensus statements with a cumulative variance percentage of 68%. These factors are (1) knowledge (ecology and environmental problems), cognitive, and behavior factors; (2) knowledge (environmental and social-political problems), cognitive, and behavior factors; (3) affect and knowledge factors; (4) affect, cognitive and knowledge factors; and (5) knowledge factor. The consensus consists of two statements in agreement. As this study is still in a pilot stage, research only focuses on interpreting qualitative analysis results. The procedure for quantitative data is not presented in this paper.