Water literacy scale development study

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable water literacy scale to measure secondary school students' knowledge and behavior about water. The sample of the study consists of 730 secondary school students studying at the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and private education institutions' graduate grade levels in Balıkesir in the 2020-2021 academic year. In the first step of the study, an item pool was created by examining the studies in the literature. The created items were sent to 6 experts for expert opinion. After expert opinion, 86 items in the item pool were reduced to 47 items. The scale was considered statistically significant since the 47 items obtained had CGI=1.00>0.67. The draft scale, which was prepared as a result of expert opinion, was applied to 35 students who participated voluntarily in order to make a pilot application. After the application of the scale, exploratory factor analysis was conducted with 500 students and it was concluded that the scale had two dimensions. It has been determined that the 'water knowledge' dimension, which constitutes the first factor of the scale, has a reliability coefficient of 0.953 and the 'water behavior' dimension, which constitutes the second factor, has a reliability coefficient of 0.944. The reliability of the prepared scale was found to be high with a coefficient of 0.963 in general. Confirmatory Factor analysis was conducted with 230 students in order to confirm the two-factor structure obtained after EFA. As a result of the analyses, the correlation between the scale factors was calculated using the Pearson Correlation coefficient. The correlation result was found to be 0.732, and it was concluded that there was a strong and significant relationship between the scale factors (p=0.000<0.05). As a result of the researches, a 28-item 'Water Literacy Scale' consisting of 5 likerts was created. The water literacy scale can be used as a scale that measures the knowledge and behavior of secondary school students.