A comparative study of environmental awareness among students pursuing Bachelor’s studies in selected academic fields at the University of Warsaw, Poland

• Authors: Anna Kalinowska , Zbigniew Szkop , Rafał Wiśniewski
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present investigation has been conducted to compare the level of environmental awareness among the University of Warsaw Bachelor students of selected fields of study, which are: economics, geography and environmental protection. Diagnostic survey method was used to collect data from 180 students. The research interviewees included 60 economics students (equivalent to 33.3% of all respondents), 56 geography students (31.1% of respondents) and 64 environmental science students (35.6% of respondents). The gender division was as follows: 119 females (66.1% of all respondents) and 61 males (33.9%) took part in the research. The survey consisted of two parts. The main part - “The study of environmental awareness” - referred to the dependent variable. Respondents were asked to provide answers to 21 questions. Twenty of them were closed-ended questions, while one was open-ended. The second part was demographics, which referred to independent variable – selected socio-demographic characteristics of respondents. The data were subjected to descriptive and chi-square analyses. Statistical analysis software STATA for Windows was used for statistical analysis. The significance level was set at 5%. The study showed that the field of study significantly affects the answers declared by students in 6 of 21 questions (number: 6, 8, 11, 12, 16 and 20). Gender significantly affects the answers declared by students in 2 questions (number: 2 and 10). It can therefore be assumed that field of study had much stronger influence on student’s level of environmental awareness than their gender.

Keywords

EN

environmental education; higher education; ecology

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Environmental & Socio-economic Studies
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 17-25

Dates

published

2016-06-01

received

2016-03-01

revised

2016-06-04

accepted

2016-06-10

online

2016-06-24

Contributors

author

Anna Kalinowska

• University Centre for Environmental Studies and Sustainable Development, University of Warsaw, Żwirki i Wigury Str. 93, 02-089 Warsaw, Poland

author

Zbigniew Szkop

• Department of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, Długa Str. 44/50, 00-241 Warsaw, Poland

author

Rafał Wiśniewski

• Institute of Sociology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Wóycickiego Str. 1/3, 01-938 Warsaw, Poland

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/environ-2016-0008