Developing and evaluating a situated psychometric instrument for assessing climate anxiety: The SAM² CAM

Climate change increasingly affects mental health and wellbeing. Although recent research has begun to examine climate anxiety, little is known about the situations where it is experienced or situational factors that predict it. To help understand how climate anxiety is experienced in UK residents, we developed and evaluated a situated psychometric instrument for assessing climate anxiety in 31 relevant situations (e.g., hearing about climate catastrophes on the news). Of interest was how climate anxiety is experienced in the UK as largely the anticipation of climate disaster and environmental pollution, rather than as actually experienced climate disaster, as in it is experienced by populations in more vulnerable countries where significant climate disaster has occurred. In an online study (N = 303 UK residents), we investigated how much climate anxiety individuals experienced in each situation, along with how much they experienced 13 factors that potentially influence climate anxiety (e.g., expectation violation, threat, coping). An individual measure of climate anxiety averaged across situations exhibited high reliability, construct validity, and content validity. Large differences in climate anxiety were observed between situations, along with a large individual by situation interaction. In linear regressions for individual participants, the 13 factors tended to correlate with climate anxiety as predicted, explaining a median 75% of climate anxiety variance. By identifying factors that predict climate anxiety for individuals, our approach provides detailed understanding of climate anxiety in each individual across situations. These predictive profiles could support screening for climate anxiety, identifying situations where it occurs, and designing individualised support.