Assessing Undergraduate Sustainability Knowledge Campus Wide:

Adam Zwickle - OSUTomas Koontz - OSUAndrew Bodine - OSU

Mark Stewart – UMDNicole Horvath - UMD

Environmental and Social Sustainability Lab

From design to implementation and analysis

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Overview How we developed our Assessment of

Sustainability Knowledge (ASK)

Why an ASK is important & how it can help

An aside on Knowledge and Literacy

Conducting an assessment

Thinking long term…

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Developing an assessment Built upon the “triple bottom line”, the

“three legged stool”, the “3 p’s” Environmental (planet) Economic (prosperity) Social (people)

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Developing an assessment Replicated questions used in the past

Coyle, 2005. “Environmental Literacy in America.”

Solicited topics and questions from experts

Held expert focus groups Pilot tested among professors, graduate,

and undergraduate students Narrowed down to 30 questions

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Developing an assessment Distributed those 30 to OSU students Used IRT to throw out 14 Added UMD’s 16 Distributed those to OSU and UMD

students Used IRT to throw out 2 Current ASK has 28 items:

ess.osu.edu

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Conceptualizing sustainability knowledge

Social

Economic

Environmental

Sustainability

Which of the following is the most commonly used definition of sustainable development?

Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

What is the most common cause of pollution of streams and rivers?

Surface water running off yards, city streets, paved, lots, and farm fields

Many economists argue that electricity prices in the U.S. are too low because…

They do not reflect the costs of pollution from generating the electricity

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How is this helpful?

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Need for measuring knowledge University goals-

More along the lines of: “Become carbon neutral by 2050”

Less common: “Create sustainably minded citizens of tomorrow”

Can help track improvement over time

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Need for measuring knowledge Serves as an evaluation for specific academic

efforts: Interdisciplinary programs Sustainability majors/minors

STARS Credit: ER 6 (STARS 2.0) – 3 points available

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“Knowledge” vs. “Literacy” Knowledge

Can be objectively measured Can be used to evaluate academic programs

Literacy = Knowledge Knowledge + values, attitudes, and behaviors Can be used to evaluate outreach efforts,

sustainability campaigns

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Measuring Behaviors, Values, and Attitudes

Make sure you are asking the right questions

Collaborate with sustainability departments to target specific behaviors (e.g., leaving lights on) Include questions on behavioral barriers Other behaviors that may get at the same

concept

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Measuring Behaviors, Values, and Attitudes

Collaborate with academic departments to develop a good survey design No need to reinvent the wheel Each survey could be a Master’s thesis

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Conducting an Assessment

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Conducting an Assessment Find your partners!

IRB approval Required for publication Exempt status

Registrar approval* Student’s emails, majors, and demographics

Survey software* We use Qualtrics, but there are others

*If a large scale assessment is planned

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Maximizing Response Rates Maximizing response rates is important to

reduce uncertainty about how well your completed sample matches the population of interest.

Dillman (2008) and others have long studied how to maximize response rates for surveys that were telephone, mailed, or in-person.

There is growing research on electronic survey response rates.

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Research Methods We compare response rates from five

different survey implementations: 1: 2012 spring OSU (n=10,000) 2: 2013 spring OSU sample A (n=10,000) 3: 2013 spring OSU sample B (n=10,000) 4: 2013 spring OSU School of ENR (n=538) 5: 2013 spring UMD (n=10,000)

We tried different treatments and tracked survey responses with survey software (Survey Monkey and Qualtrics)

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Key Variables Affecting Response Rates among College Students

Timing When to send the invitation and reminders

Incentives

Email text Who it is from

Questionnaire format Long list of questions vs. more page clicks

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Timing Matters Time of Semester:

Last week of semester and into finals week

Middle of semester

Time of Day: 6:00 am 6:00 pm

Reminders are critical big spike in completed surveys after each

reminder, with a fast decay

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Timing Matters Overall, you want students sitting at

their computers… but wanting to be distracted

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Incentives Some disagreement in research on best

way to provide incentives ahead of time (Dillman 2008) randomly select winner of 1 big prize give more/all respondents smaller prizes

May impact the validity of the data

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Survey Responses

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 160

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

136

30 6 0 3 5 2 0

10322 4 5

1132

7418 16

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 120

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

408

71

570

226

47

545

52

516

11844 22 2

UMDn=1,556

OSUn=2,621

Day

Day

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Email text

How the invitation emails are phrased affects response rates.

Besides making the invitation personal, clear, and as short as possible, prior research has found that who the invitation comes from matters. An appeal from a trusted authority

increases response rates.

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Email text: Appeal from Authority We compared an appeal from authority

versus an appeal from a peer (student).

Two surveys, A and B, had an appeal from a higher authority (University VP) for first 3 contacts.

For the 4th contact kept the higher authority for A, but switched B to have to an appeal from a grad student

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Email text: Appeal from Authority

Results:

= additional 538

= additional 348

over the next 65 hours

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Questionnaire Format Trade-off:

Long list of questions to scroll down Shorter lists with a page click to get to the

next page

We analyzed respondent drop-outs spots Highest spots were just after clicking to

the next page

We recommend finding a balance…

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Non-Respondent Bias Even after efforts to maximize response

rates, are the non-respondents different from the respondents?

We conducted a non-respondent short survey (5 questions + some demographics).

Results indicate that non-respondents are slightly but significantly less knowledgeable about sustainability topics, but no difference in GPA or pro-environmental behaviors.

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Planning ahead… For longitudinal studies:

Write a multiple year IRB Let registrar know this is a yearly survey Finding partners

Sustainability office Academic departments with survey expertise

(interdisciplinary social science, communications, environmental studies, sociology, political science, psychology)

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AcknowledgementsFunded by:

Office of Energy Services and Sustainability http://sustainability.osu.edu/

OSU’s School of Environment

& Natural Resources http://senr.osu.edu/

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Thank You!

Environment and Social Sustainability Lab ess.osu.edu Contains:

This presentation The 28 question ASK Forthcoming article

Email Zwickle.1@osu.edu Koontz.31@osu.edu

Questions?