Does Climate Change Affect The Economy? Scale Development Study For Determining The Awareness Level Of Students

It is of great importance to raise public awareness of climate change. This awareness can be used to combat potential dangers and threats. It is crucial to raise awareness in order to prevent the adverse effects of climate change or to mitigate the emerging ones. In this study, a scale was developed to measure the level of awareness of university students, who represent the young and educated population, about the economic impacts caused by climate change. The objective of this study is to develop a valid and reliable measurement instrument for the assessment of students' awareness of the economic impacts of climate change. The study group consisted of students enrolled in the basic and applied sciences at Sivas Cumhuriyet University during the 2023-2024 academic year. A cluster sampling method, a probability-based sampling technique, was employed to identify a sample of 780 individuals. The data were analysed using the R Package Programme. As this was an empirical study, the AFA analysis was conducted using the R "psych" package. The scale comprises 39 items and two subscales: "Climate Change Awareness" and "Importance of Climate Change Awareness." A total of three factors were identified, namely, climate change awareness, knowledge about the negative impacts of climate change and climate change concern. It was observed that the developed scale accounted for a total of 63% of the variance. Furthermore, the Cronbach alpha value for reliability was calculated to be 0.96. The study employed DFA analysis, utilising the R "psych" package for analysis. The RMSE, RMR and SRMR values were found to be 0.06, while the CFI, TLI, NFI, GFI and AGFI values were 0.98 and 0.97, respectively.