ABSTRACT
Conducting research on attitudes and values about the environment and sustainable development often requires the use of questionnaires or other types of assessment instruments. For example, when a researcher wishes to investigate attitudes toward sustainable development, a typical way to obtain this information is to develop a scale (a set of questions) designed to elicit individuals' views about the subject. Developing an instrument that measures what the researcher wants it to measure is not a simple process. How can the researcher be certain that the items in the questionnaire are really measuring attitudes toward sustainability? Can the researcher be sure that the same scale measures these attitudes consistently across people and time? The field of psychometrics helps to answer these questions.
