Evaluating University Students’ Understanding of Atmospheric Environmental Issues Using a Three-Tier Diagnostic Test

Year 2019, Volume: 9 Issue: 1, 1 - 17, 08.12.2018

Sakıp Kahraman

Abstract

The objective of this study was to
evaluate university students’ understanding of atmospheric environmental issues
according to gender and attending (or not) a college level environmental course
(CLEC) including topics such as global warming (GW), greenhouse effect (GE),
ozone layer depletion (OLD) and acid rain (AR), and to investigate their
misconceptions about the examined content using three-tier diagnostic test. In
this study, the survey method was used. The sample of the study consisted of
170 students enrolled in the College of Science at San Jose State University in
the USA. To collect the data, “The
Atmosphere-Related Environmental Problems Three-Tier Diagnostic Test (AREPDiT)”
was used. The data were statistically analyzed using variance analysis (two-way
ANOVA) to determine possible differences in students’ understanding of
atmospheric environmental issues. In addition, they were descriptively analyzed
to find out what misconceptions students had. The results of the analysis
indicated that male students’ conceptual understanding of atmospheric
environmental issues was significantly higher than that of their female
counterparts and that students who had attended a CLEC had a higher conceptual
understanding of atmospheric environmental issues than those who had not. It
was also found that university students had various misconceptions about
atmospheric environmental issues.

Keywords

Atmospheric environmental issues, misconception, three-tier diagnostic test, university students, gender

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