Climate Change Anxiety Assessment: The Psychometric Properties of the Polish Version of the Climate Anxiety Scale

Abstract

The Climate Anxiety Scale (CAS) is a 13-item questionnaire for assessing climate anxiety (CA) as a psychological response to climate change. The CAS consists of two subscales, namely, cognitive impairment and functional impairment. This study aimed to validate the Polish version of the CAS. The sample included 603 respondents (344 females, 247 males, and 12 non-binary), aged 18–70 years (M = 25.32, SD = 9.59). Based on the exploratory factor analysis results, we proposed a 3-factor solution (i.e., intrusive symptoms, reflections on CA, and functional impairment), which seems to be theoretically more consistent with the content of the CAS statements. The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the original 2-factor solution and the 3-factor one had a satisfactory and a good fit to the data, respectively, as well as both were invariant across different gender, age, and educational level categories. Despite the fact that the 3-factor solution had the best-fit indices, we recommended to examine the CAS structure in different samples and use the overall CAS score in cross-cultural research. Cognitive and functional impairment subscales were positively correlated with personal experience of climate change, behavioral engagement, environmental identity, and environmental motives, but they were negatively correlated with climate change denial and sense of safety. The CAS subscales were correlated with depressive symptoms, but contrary to expectations, they were not associated with anxiety symptoms and any cognitive coping strategies. The Polish version of the CAS has satisfactory psychometric properties. Overall, we reported low CA levels in the Polish sample. Women and younger people experienced higher CA.

Measuring Planetary Eco-Emotions: A Systematic Review of Currently Available Instruments and Their Psychometric Properties

“…40 A gender difference was not found in the CCAS 15 in terms of cognitive-emotional impairment or functional impairment, but for behavioural engagement women reported higher levels than men. In Wullenkord, 49 compared to men, women reported higher levels of climate change anxiety (overall score); while Larionow 45 found that women had higher cognitive impairment and functional impairment in CCAS. Testing the validation of CCAS in four countries, Tam 48 revealed that men in China and the US had higher levels of cognitive impairment and functional impairment, as compared to women.…”

“…Bowler and Schwarzer’s study 38 had high risk of bias. Four validation studies of CCAS 45,45–47,49 had moderate risk of bias. One validation study of HEAS had moderate 54 and one had high risk of bias.…”

Development and validation of a youth climate anxiety scale for the Youth Development Instrument survey

“…The four climate anxiety items included on the YDI survey were drawn from both factors (i.e., cognitive-emotional impairment and functional impairment) of the original CCAS. This study adds to the growing body of literature that aims to validate the CCAS in different populations (Larionow et al, 2022;Mouguiama-Daouda et al, 2022;Wullenkord et al, 2021); however, to our knowledge, no attempts to shorten the scale have been conducted yet.…”

Mental health during ecological crisis: translating and validating the Hogg Eco-anxiety Scale for Argentinian and Spanish populations

“…An additional benefit in establishing cross-cultural measures is to facilitate examination of whether any groups are more vulnerable to these psychological effects of climate change than others. For example, young people are thought to be more susceptible to experiencing climate anxiety (US [ 8 ]; Poland [ 32 ]), though Hogg et al’s [ 9 ] Australian research found that older participants reported higher rumination, while younger participants reported higher personal impact anxiety, and there was no relationship between age and experiences of affective and behavioural symptoms. This indicates that more research is needed on eco-anxiety’s associations with age.…”