USC and other universities share approaches to measuring sustainability literacy
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education hosted a webinar Wednesday for universities, including USC, to share their approaches to measuring sustainability literacy and culture on their campuses.
More than 5,000 USC students, postdoctorates, faculty and staff participated in USC’s first annual sustainability survey in April. The survey was conducted to help the University inform sustainability engagement and education programming on campus and establish a baseline to measure the University’s progress toward its 2028 “Assignment: Earth” engagement goals, and its results were released in August.
On average, respondents scored 61.5 percent for 10 general sustainability literacy questions and 52.3% on sustainability behavior and culture questions. The survey found more than 50% of respondents had a moderate or strong interest in learning more about sustainability practices and 47% of respondents were interested in getting involved with USC sustainability efforts or groups but had not yet done so. More than 50% of respondents indicated that they “usually” took actions to be more sustainable, such as reducing energy use and plastic waste and conserving water and paper.
The University first took AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System assessment — a self-reporting framework which helps universities assess their sustainability performance — in 2021, earning a silver rating. 577 universities, including all the UCs, have STARS ratings, which are based on performance credits earned in areas such as academics, engagement, operations, planning and administration and innovation and leadership.
The webinar started with a brief overview of two STARS credits universities can pursue through sustainability literacy and culture assessments. STARS AC-6 requires a survey focused on knowledge of sustainability topics and challenges, while STARS EN-6 requires a survey on sustainability values, behaviors, beliefs and awareness of campus sustainability initiatives. Universities can administer both surveys to the entire campus community directly or by representative sample.
USC kept in mind both meeting STARs requirements and measuring progress based on USC-specific goals when designing its sustainability survey.
“Definitely utilize your survey to fill in data gaps, and not just those AC-6 and EN-6 credits,” said USC Office of Sustainability data analyst Julie Hopper. “In addition to STARS, we implemented a survey to measure progress on our other sustainability goals at USC.”
Hopper described the process of developing, distributing and reporting USC’s sustainability literacy and culture survey along with representatives from three other institutions — Weber State University, Ramapo College and Williams College.
Highlights from Weber State’s survey included a need to work on inclusion of social justice in understandings of sustainability, a lower frequency of civic and political engagement among sustainability behaviors and higher concerns about the climate than national levels. Through Ramapo College’s survey, students and faculty recommended the university find ways to embed sustainability in the curriculum. Williams College’s survey is still collecting responses.
From development to distribution, Hopper noted that the survey process took four months. The Office of Sustainability staff and interns reviewed sustainability surveys from more than 30 STARS-reporting universities to select common questions, which they modified for further clarity and relevance to USC. Staff also created additional questions to incorporate into the survey to best serve USC’s sustainability goals.
The survey then went through rounds of feedback and revision. Select USC students, postdocs, staff and faculty reviewed the initial and final survey drafts. After incorporating their feedback, the Office of Sustainability team sent it for external review to sustainability staff at Arizona State University, California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Once the team completed the survey and launched it in USC Qualtrics, they distributed it by emailing the entire university community, encouraging USC organizations to share it with their members and putting up signs around campus. Each participant also had a chance to win one of 20 $100 USC Bookstore gift cards as an incentive for completing the survey.
After the survey closed at the end of April, the team cleaned, analyzed and visualized the data using tools such as Qualtrics, R and Excel. Hopper said that the university was transparent about the data and its limitations.
The University also created tailored reports for specific populations like Keck Medicine, which Hopper recommended other universities do with their survey results.
“That way you’re really honing in on the interest of those population groups at your university,” Hopper said. “Know your audience, when you’re doing those tailored reports, think about what’s important to them. What can they do with this information, and distribute specific results to those with power to implement change.”
The University’s survey, along with Weber State’s, assessed both sustainability literacy and culture. Weber State’s survey was based on a broad definition of sustainability.
“We define sustainability holistically, very much environmental, social, and economic realms are all included,” said Alice Mulder, director of the Weber Sustainability Center.
Weber State’s survey questions included developed and tested knowledge and attitude questions such as Assessing Sustainability Knowledge and the Six-Americas Super Short Survey.
Williams College also developed its sustainability survey following reviews of existing sustainability literacy and culture assessments, including Ohio State’s ASK, the SULI test, and surveys developed by Colby, Furman, Cornell, ASU and College of the Atlantic.
Williams considered combining the sustainability literacy and culture assessment into a single survey to “reduce survey fatigue,” but ultimately decided to develop a separate sustainability culture survey.
“We decided after going into [the review and research] that we would separate the two surveys,” said Tanja Srebotnjak, director of Williams’ Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives. “We felt in particular that it would require more immersion into the sustainability culture, research and literature for us to fully capture the state of the art and transfer it meaningfully to the Williams College context.”
Williams shared the correct answers to its sustainability literacy questions after respondents submitted their form, which USC did not. Whether or not to share the correct answers afterward was a point of discussion for the attending universities.
“We’re biasing the results, potentially for the next year if we use the same survey questions, and we do want to be consistent with our survey questions so we can compare across time,” Hopper said. “[But] at the end of the day, is it bad that they know the answer because now they’re educated and so it’s okay if they score better, which I’m kind of leaning towards but very interested in this question. It’s such a great question.”