Environmental Identity Scale

Background 

The Environmental Identity scale was originally created by Dr. Susan Clayton and tested with college students in American universities (Clayton, 2003) before being used in studies around the world. Recently, Clayton collaborated with colleagues to update and revise the EID scale so that both the language and examples of nature used in the scale are relevant to a wider range of people (Clayton et al., 2021). As part of this revision, they tested the tool with six different groups, including American adults and high school students, Peruvian, Russian, and Swiss adults, and Taiwanese undergraduate students. As part of the revision process, they also found that higher scores on the EID Scale correlated positively with pro-environmental behaviors. The revised version of the EID is featured here. 

Format

The revised Environmental Identity Scale consists of 14 statements to which people respond on a seven-point scale, with 1 being “not at all true of me,” and 7 being “completely true of me.”

Audience

Adolescents and adults (14+ years of age)

When and how to use the tool

This tool could be used before and after a program to measure change in a person’s environmental identity or could be used as a one time measure of environmental identity at any time. Before using this tool to evaluate your program, think critically about whether your program is likely to change a person’s environmental identity in a measurable way. A short nature walk or one-hour program is unlikely to change a person’s identity or their underlying feelings about the natural world. This tool may be more appropriate for programs that have a longer duration or that are specifically designed to influence a person’s sense of connection to the natural world. 

How to analyze

We recommend entering survey responses into a spreadsheet using a program such as Microsoft Excel. Create a spreadsheet with 14 columns for the 14 statements and a row for each individual. Using a 1–7 point scale, enter the equivalent value (1 for “not at all true of me” to 7 for “completely true of me.”) Enter a dot if the response was skipped.

Create an average score for each individual by adding all of their responses and dividing by the number of questions answered. Do not include skipped questions for which you entered a dot. The average will be between 1 and 7. EID scores of 1–3 indicate a lower environmental identity, a score of 4 indicates neither a low nor a high environmental identity, and scores of 5–7 indicate a higher level of environmental identity.

When administering the pre-experience survey and post-experience surveys, you can conduct higher-level statistics on your data to understand if participants had significant changes in the outcome areas after their participation in the program. 

What to do next

Once you’ve administered your survey and analyzed the data, consider the following suggestions about what to do next: 

• If a baseline assessment shows that your audience has low scores on the EID scale, you might want to design a program that can help increase their environmental identity.
• You could compare populations to determine if members have different scores than the general population, or if one geographic area of your community is different from another. This could also provide justification for program development, marketing, or funding proposals.
• If you used the EID to measure changes in environmental identity by administering it to participants before and after programming, do you see a change in scores between the pre-test and post-test? Keep in mind that you may not see a change, particularly if your program is short in duration or is not designed to influence people’s sense of connection to or interdependence with nature. 
• Invite program staff or other partners to look over the data. Together you might also consider:
  • What do these results tell us about our programming? Why do we think we got these results?
  • What results did we think we would get? And did these data support our goals?
  • If our results did not support our goals, can we brainstorm on areas within the programming or delivery to influence EID? What changes should be made to programming, or how should new programs be designed?
  • What stakeholders should we reach out to for collaboratively discussing program design?
  • Who or what organizations can we share our learning with?

How to see if this tool would work with your program

Before using this tool with a large group, you may want to pilot test the tool. To make sure that members of the audience you will be assessing understand the tool, you can conduct think-aloud interviews where individuals talk you through their understanding of the different statements. This can help you identify words or instructions that they may find confusing. This may be particularly important if you translate the tool into a different language or if you are using the tool in a culture other than the one in which it was originally developed. 

Tool Tips

• This tool is best used in its entirety, but nouns in the items, such as flowers, can be changed to a more appropriate example.