Connecticut College
AC-6: Sustainability Literacy Assessment

The questions are in the attached file.

The Sustainability Literacy and Culture Survey was developed in Spring and Summer 2019 through a collaboration between the Office of Sustainability and the Office of Institutional Research. It was administered in September 2019 and September 2020 with a plan to then administer it every two years. It was last administered from September 16 to October 17, 2022.

The Sustainability Literacy and Culture Survey was administered through the Office of Institutional Research to the entire campus community from September 16 to October 7, 2022. The survey was sent to all full-time employees (faculty and staff, n=615) and all full-time students (n=1,916). Students received automatic reminders to complete the survey, while faculty and staff received 3 reminders throughout the response period. For employees, the response rate was 30% (n=184 responses), with 33% of faculty members responding and 29% of staff members responding. Among students, the response rate was 15% (n=284 responses).

In terms of the representativeness of the sample, overall, the respondents were within 7 percentage points of the campus population as a whole in terms of race/ethnicity, although student respondents were less representative of the whole campus population in this regard than faculty and staff: among faculty and students, the percentage of white respondents was within 4 percentage points, whereas with staff, white respondents were overrepresented by about 14 percentage points.

In terms of gender, overall the respondents were within 6 percentage points of the campus population as a whole. Again, staff respondents were less representative in this regard, with females overrepresented by 10 percentage points (compared with only a 2-percentage-point gender difference for faculty and a 7-percentage-point difference for students). In terms of students' class years, sophomores were represented among respondents most closely to their proportion of the overall student body (about a 7-percentage-point difference), while juniors and seniors were underrepresented by a much larger extent and first-year students were about twice as heavily represented among survey respondents as among the student body as a whole.

Upon completion of the survey, respondents are taken to a website where they can read the correct answers (with explanation) for the literacy portion of the survey.

Overall the results of the assessment show that our campus community has a basic understanding of current environmental and sustainability issues with a clear majority selecting the correct answer in all but 3 questions. However, our results over time are mixed. From 2019-2020 (the first two survey cycles), we saw an increase in correct responses for 10 of 15 questions. For 4 of those questions, we saw another increase in correct responses in 2022. For most other questions we saw a mix of results, sometimes an increase in correct answers in 2020 and then a decrease in 2022 or a both increasing correct and incorrect responses for questions with multiple parts.

There were 2 questions where we have seen a steady decline in correct responses. The first of these is the number of people who can correctly identify the primary fuel used for electricity at Connecticut College (natural gas). While the majority of respondants still selected the correct answer, more people over time have begun selecting renewables - a change from 12% in 2019 to 17% in 2020 to 23% in 2022. This is an interesting result that may be due to the increase in publicity for renewable projects. The other question where we saw a decrease in the number of correct responses over time was for the question "what is the largest contributor to Conn's carbon footprint?" The correct answer is electricity use, which was selected by 66% in 2019, 61% in 2020 and 49% in 2022. Most of this change has come from more respondants selecting commuting as the top contributor to emissions. This may reflect how prominent initiatives like EV charging have been in recent years.

As stated above, there were three questions for which the majority of responses were incorrect across all three years of the survey. The first was a question about population growth where 44% responded in 2022 that they believed population would increase exponentially over the next 100 years (the correct answer, increase and then level off by 2100 had the second largest number of responses with 28%, an increase since 2020). The second asked where does the trash from campus go when thrown away. The most common answer (44%) selected "landfill in Connecticut" while 38% selected the correct answer "Incinerator in Connecticut" (an increase in correct responses of 2% from 2020) The final question where incorrect answers were greater than correct answers asked "which of the following would be the most effective way to reduce the average American's carbon emissions?" 41% of respondants selected "switching to a vegetarian diet" while 26% selected the correct answer "reducing air travel by the equivalent" (a decrease in correct responses from 2020).