A study of a scale for the level of conscious consumerism

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale for measuring the levels of conscious consumerism of primary school students. The sample of the study is comprised of 113 4^th grade students during the Educational Year 2009/2010 from a state school located in Sakarya, Turkey. For validity purposes, learned opinion was received for face validity and content validity. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted for construct validity. At first, values from the KMO and Barlett tests were taken into account in order to carry out a factor analysis. Since KMO test suggested a variance of .73 and Barlett Sphericity test a meaningful variation (χ²=480.64, p=.000), it was decided that it would be appropriate to conduct a factor analysis for the scale. During the exploratory factor analysis, the items 11, 12, 13, 22 and 23 were excluded from the scale since they distorted the construct. Afterward, a second factor analysis was conducted on the 19-item scale. The exploratory factor analysis concluded that the scale had a three-factor construct and was comprised of a total of 19 items. An overall look at the 19-item scale indicated that it accounted for 40.5 percent of the total variance and inner consistency coefficient was .77. All these values suggest that the scale is a valid and reliable one.