Development of the Scale for Environmental Aesthetic Awareness and investigation of students' environmental aesthetic awareness

Although environmental aesthetic has received considerable attention in recent years, there is a need for measuring and evaluating environmental aesthetic. With considering this gap in the literature, the purpose of this study is to develop the "Scale for Environmental Aesthetic Awareness" for university students and to compare students' levels of environmental aesthetic awareness according to gender, interest in art and the place where family lives. The study group is comprised of 969 university students. For conducting the validity study of the scale, the study group was randomly divided into two: Exploratory Factor Analysis group and Confirmatory Factor Analysis group. After the elimination of outliers, 329 students remained in the EFA group and 255 students in the CFA group. As a result of EFA, 27 items were gathered under three sub-dimensions. As a result of the first-order and second-order CFA, it was seen that the model-data fit was achieved and the three-factor structure of the scale and its general structure were confirmed. The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of the first, second, third sub-dimensions were calculated respectively as .80, .71 and .71. The Cronbach alfa coefficient value for the whole scale was .82. Three-way variance analysis results showed that the effects of gender and the place where family lives were not found to be statistically significant while the effect of interest in art was found to be significant; thus, the mean of the students stating they were interested in arts was found to be higher.