Psychometric evaluation of the Spanish adaptation of the Climate Change Anxiety Scale / Evaluación psicométrica de la adaptación española de la Escala de Ansiedad por el Cambio Climático

Abstract

Climate change anxiety encompasses a constellation of disturbing psychological responses associated with climate change concern. However, the psychometric evaluation of the Climate Change Anxiety Scale (CCAS), one of the most relevant measures of this phenomenon, has yielded inconsistent results. This research aims to elucidate these discrepancies while concurrently seeking to validate a Spanish adaptation of the CCAS (CCAS-SP) using a Spanish population sample (N = 460). Three different latent representations of the CCAS-SP were modelled, describing climate change anxiety as uni-, bi- or tri-dimensional. Model fit analyses supported the conceptualization of climate change anxiety as comprising two related yet distinct components: cognitive and functional impairments. Moreover, these types of impairments, after controlling for common variance, could be well differentiated in their linkages with pro-environmental orientation, subjective well-being and psychological distress. Notably, alternative, less parsimonious structures did not seem to provide a more accurate representation of the correlates of climate change anxiety. These findings suggest that the CCAS-SP can be considered a promising instrument for assessing this construct in Spanish samples.