The Development of the Questionnaire

Abstract

This chapter presents the development of the survey in the underlying study in this book, a description of our sample, and the results of the validation efforts. Our survey includes variations of existing scales which have been used to measure climate-relevant behaviors within the areas of housing, mobility, diet, and consumption. We go beyond these existing questions, however, as we also include various new items and analyze the validity of existing and new questions. Based on our findings we recommend a set of questions for different significant areas of emissions, for example, asking about the distance traveled by car in the previous year, the number of short-haul and long-haul flights, and a question about the frequency of the consumption of particularly energy-intensive foods.