Going Deeper: Validation of the DEEP Connection to Nature Scale
Background There have been many iterations of a Connection to Nature (CTN) measure (see Ives et al., 2017, Restall & Conrad, 2015, and Tam 2013 for review). Several of these measures have proposed multi-dimensional structure (Davis, Le, and Coy 2011; Dong et al. 2020; Hatty et al. 2020; Kurth et al. 2020; Meis-Harris, Borg, and Jorgensen 2021; Olivos and Aragonés 2011), however there is little consistency across these dimensional structures. We build upon two recently published measures Meis-Harris, Borg, and Jorgensen (2021), which ground their dimensional structure in a thorough cross-disciplinary review of the nature connectedness literature. We extend their findings by addressing concerns that measures of CTN are vulnerable to self-report biases. In particular, concerns have been raised that people may be more likely to endorse CTN items out of social desirability or may simply not be able to express the abstract concept of connection to nature when asked directly (Gould and Schultz 2021). A possible solution to these issues is proposed by the Disposition to Connect with Nature measure which asks about people’s bonding behavior with nature instead of simply asking about preferences to being in nature (Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2011). We adapted items from the Multi-dimensional CTN scale (Meis-Harris, Borg, and Jorgensen 2021) and the Disposition to Connect with Nature scale (Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2011) as well as including several items that we felt addressed the concerns raised about self-report bias.
Feb 1, 2024
