Item Construction for Measuring Environmental Cleanliness and Reuse Attitudes of College going Students

Shramana Singha Roy                                                                                                                                   Debdulal Dutta Roy Adamas University, Kolkata                                                                                                                         Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata Pages:58 - 63 In mental health study of college going students, environmental cleanliness and reuse play critical role. Clean educational environment develops positive physical and mental health. Re-use maximizes benefit and minimizes the cost. It indirectly supports mental health of students. Objectives of the present study are (a) to construct items that measure the attitude towards environmental cleanliness and re-use and (b) to test face validity of the constructed items on the basis of expert judgment. Face validity refers to the extent to which a test appears to measure what it is intended to measure. Environmental attitudes (EA), a crucial construct in environmental psychology, are a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating the natural environment with some degree of favour or disfavour. Thus the present research provides a theoretical approach to the measurement of EA, in which the cleanliness and re-use domain of EA is considered. Data were collected from 11 judges (M=7; F=4), with age ranging from 22 to 53 years ( mean = 29; sd=11.79). Results revealed that the judges consistently selected the items having the words in the operational definition suggesting good face validity. Finally 14, out of 36 were selected. Keywords: Face Validity, Item Construction, Environmental Attitude, Environmental Cleanliness, Re-use.