Publication Date

1976

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Swan, Malcolm D.

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Outdoor Teacher Education

LCSH

Ecology; Junior college students

Abstract

Environmental considerations have become a prominent part of life in the United States in the last five years. A key concept here is the environmental continuum which stretches from apathy, awareness, and concern to positive action. The focus in this study is upon environmental concern, a mixture of the affective and cognitive domain. The purposes of the study were to test the environmental concern expressed by (a) junior college students and their parents, (b) mothers and fathers, and (c) an interviewer's estimate of and the student's actual test performance. A twenty-item instrument was constructed in attempt to measure environmental concern, which was defined as the ex­tent to which a subject's responses reflected a commitment to improve the quality of life around him. Five of the ten items designed to be favorable toward the environment and one of the ten items designed to be unfavorable were rejected by a panel of twenty northern Illinois graduate students in Outdoor Teacher Education. Responses to the remaining four­teen items provided the central data in the study. Twenty-five male and twenty-five female junior college students were given the Environmental Concern Test (ECT) in person. The writer estimated the relative strength of the student’s environmental concern on the basis of responses to a five-item questionnaire given orally. Each of the fifty students assisted in mailing copies of the ECT to their parents; twenty-six pairs of parents responded. Specific item responses indicated that students have a relatively high regard for early outdoor education and recy­cling. Females appeared to outscore their male counterparts, while fathers seemed to he motivated by economic considera­tions in their responses. Spearman r correlations used to test the null hypotheses disclosed no significant differences in the cumulative test scores of mothers and fathers, students and mothers, or stu­dents and fathers. Female subgroup means tended to run higher than those of males. The writer did not experience success in his attempt to estimate environmental concern. Only twenty-six students of fifty were placed correctly above or below the mean. Further refinement of the test instrument and a more precise oral questionnaire appear in order before similar studies should be attempted in the area of environmental concern.

Extent

47 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

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Text

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