A comparative study of environmental awareness among students pursuing Bachelor’s studies in selected academic fields at the University of Warsaw, Poland

The present investigation has been conducted to compare the level of environmental awareness among the University of Warsaw Bachelor students of selected fields of study, which are: economics, geography and environmental protection. Diagnostic survey method was used to collect data from 180 students. The research interviewees included 60 economics students (equivalent to 33.3% of all respondents), 56 geography students (31.1% of respondents) and 64 environmental science students (35.6% of respondents). The gender division was as follows: 119 females (66.1% of all respondents) and 61 males (33.9%) took part in the research. The survey consisted of two parts. The main part - “The study of environmental awareness” - referred to the dependent variable. Respondents were asked to provide answers to 21 questions. Twenty of them were closed-ended questions, while one was open-ended. The second part was demographics, which referred to independent variable – selected socio-demographic characteristics of respondents. The data were subjected to descriptive and chi-square analyses. Statistical analysis software STATA for Windows was used for statistical analysis. The significance level was set at 5%. The study showed that the field of study significantly affects the answers declared by students in 6 of 21 questions (number: 6, 8, 11, 12, 16 and 20). Gender significantly affects the answers declared by students in 2 questions (number: 2 and 10). It can therefore be assumed that field of study had much stronger influence on student’s level of environmental awareness than their gender.