Adaptation of leadership competence to climate change education: Conceptual foundations, validation, and applications of a new measure

Abstract

A nine-item measure is constructed to assess leadership competence in climate change in adolescents. Reliability and validity are statistically verified via Cronbach’s alpha, Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin and Bartlett’s test, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, based on data of 624 students from Shanghai. The measure reflects internal consistency, factorial structure, and validity with Cronbach’s reliability coefficient of 0.84 on the whole. Test of measurement invariance indicates the measure’s sufficient stability with both calibration and validation samples. To represent its utility, this measure has been successfully applied to an empirical test. The results reveal differences between the genders, with female students’ leadership competence in climate change significantly higher than the males; positive associations between leadership competence in climate change, self-reported pro-climate behavior, and certain life experience have also been found, confirming our theoretical hypotheses. To conclude, the measure proves to be an empirically valid instrument that could help climate change educators measure leadership competence in climate change in adolescents through teaching and learning and hopefully cultivate more youth leadership in the context of climate change. Recommendations for application and future research are discussed.