A Reliability Generalization Meta-analysis of the Climate Change Worry Scale

Melehat Gezer^1*Yıldız Yıldırım²Mustafa İlhan¹

• ¹Dicle University, Diyarbakır, Türkiye
• ²Adnan Menderes University, Aydın, Aydın, Türkiye

Climate change worry is an increasingly critical issue in terms of eco-psychology literature. A commonly used instrument for measuring this construct is the Climate Change Worry Scale (CCWS) developed by Stewart (2021). This Likert-type scale, which assesses individuals' climate change worry with 10 items collected under a single factor, has been adapted to multiple cultures and has been utilized in a vast number of studies carried out in diverse countries. Nevertheless, there is no study to synthesize the reliability values obtained from individual studies for the scale. The purpose of the current meta-analysis was to perform a reliability generalization for CCWS. To this end, an exhaustive literature search was carried out from July 14 till November 17, 2024, in EBSCO, ERIC, Taylor & Francis, PubMed, and Web of Science databases, and Google Scholar with the keyword "Climate Change Worry Scale". After scrutinizing the identified studies in terms of duplications and inclusion and exclusion criteria, the research was executed on the 40 Cronbach's alpha coefficient acquired from 37 papers. The results of the analysis done by running the random effects model and the Bonnet transformation showed that the pooled Cronbach's alpha was .932 (95% CI = 0.919-0.942). The moderator analysis results revealed that the sample descriptors and study characteristics included in the meta-analysis did not significantly affect the reliability estimates. Accordingly, the CCWS was detected to be an instrument that produces highly reliable measurements regardless of factors such as region, language, participants' age, and the total number of items they answered during the administration. Lastly, the reliability induction rate was determined as 29.41%. However, the high heterogeneity ascertained among reliability estimates of the primary studies exposed the malpractice of generalizing the reliability of CCWS scores across different populations and research conditions. This situation also disclosed how essential it is to introduce detailed information about the sample demographics and administration conditions of the scale while reporting reliability.