University of Missouri
AC-6: Sustainability Literacy Assessment

In 2012, a 118-question survey was distributed to a randomized list of student emails intended to serve as a representative sample of the campus. Total respondents were 1385 students. The survey was designed to assess MU student environmental literacy, concerns, and behaviors for use in program planning and assessment. It was a follow-up to a survey administered in 2009. A few of the themes of the survey include: Self-reported environmental behavior Environmental literacy Environmental impact self-efficacy Perception of peer support for environmental behavior Perception of institutional support for environmental behavior Emotion component of environmental behavior/environmental activism Programming – MU specific New Environmental Paradigm (NEP)

The assessment was administered over the period of 3/26/2012 12:00:00 AM - 10/31/2012 11:59:00 PM and was distributed via email.

See attached document for questions and quantitative results. Qualitative Literacy Results: Question 12: Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statement-I have a pretty good understanding of what environmental sustainability means. More than 83% of respondents agreed with this statement. *This question provides a good framework to recognize the current understanding of sustainability among the student body. In addition it provides a base for the open ended Question 24 that follows Question 23 below: Question 23: How closely does the following definition resemble your definition of sustainability? "Environmental sustainability means meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Question 24 (206 Answers): Do you have a different definition of environmental sustainability? This question asked whether respondents have a different definition of sustainability from the standard, “environmental sustainability means meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This proves to be important in understanding student literacy of sustainability as a whole. A few examples of their responses include: * "Action and inaction taken as necessary to improve real nature's ability to withstand the onslaught of human nature. 'Meeting the needs of the present generation' is impossible to do 'without compromising...future generations' since the needs aren't defined and apparently are too vast right now to even be met." * "Environmental sustainability demands the co-existence of nature and humanity. It seeks human work in order to detain the ongoing destruction of our planet. The future is not an important aspect in environmental sustainability because we have to focus on the present, in my humble opinion." * "Environmental sustainability requires everyone really consider about not only themselves, but also the people and they do not know ,the animals the plants. We cannot be selfish if you really cares about environmental sustainability, we need to make efforts to help a tree, a people living in other country, and new generation to live in good and health way." **The questions displayed here are a sample of questions that pertain to sustainability literacy and will be included in the next student survey to serve as a benchmark to illustrate whether an improvement of sustainable literacy exists on campus.**

Reports completed from survey results are available in the Environmental Leadership Office and are available upon request.