Designing an Energy Literacy Questionnaire for Middle and High School Youth

Abstract

A measurement scale has been developed to assess secondary students’ energy literacy—a citizenship understanding of energy that includes cognitive as well as affective and behavioral items. Instrument development procedures followed psychometric principles from educational and social psychology research. Initial exploration of the measure yielded promising results: internal consistencies for the cognitive, affective, and behavioral subscales, measured by Cronbach's α, ranged from 0.75 to 0.83; average discrimination indices ranged from 0.27 to 0.46. The instrument's validity was supported with contrasted-groups and developmental-age progression comparisons, as well as factor analyses. The energy literacy questionnaire provides an opportunity to measure baseline levels of energy literacy and to assess broader impacts of educational interventions.