Awareness, acceptances and activities as components of the environmental consciousness of youth

Abstract

The formation of human health takes place under conditions of both positive and negative influence of the external environment. There is an undoubted connection between human health and the degree of its intervention in the natural environment, which, in turn, is determined by the level of environmental awareness of society. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the levels of awareness, instructions and activities at different levels of environmental consciousness of modern youth. Used methods: bibliographic; questionnaire method (to collect data on the environmental awareness of young people); statistical (for selection and analysis of obtained data); mathematical (for constructing formulas and calculating levels of ecological consciousness and its components). A questionnaire was developed to survey students and high school students in different cities of Ukraine. 285 respondents aged 15 to 24 took part in the survey. In order to compare the level of environmental awareness of young people with  people of other age groups, 53 respondents over the age of 24 were involved in the survey, which was 15,7% of the total number of respondents. The questionnaire was conventionally divided into semantic modules for the possibility of determining the levels of environmental knowledge, instructions and behavior. To achieve the goal of the work, the level of environmental awareness and its components, taking into account gender and age, was assessed. Quantitative values of the levels of the components of environmental consciousness were calculated according to the integral evaluation formulas. For the convenience of assessing the level of the components of environmental consciousness, the quantitative values were ranked in three classes: "weak", "medium" and "high" severity. It was found that young people of both sexes almost do not differ in the high level of guidance. However, the share of girls with a high level of awareness is slightly higher than the share of boys and is significantly higher by a high level of activity. Awareness of the social and individual value of nature increases significantly with age, but readiness for active nature conservation activities does not change with age. The dependence of eco-awareness on the place of residence has been established: in small towns, the eco-awareness of residents is higher than in those who live in large cities. Also, eco-awareness depends on the field of study: students of humanitarian specialties have a significantly higher level of eco-awareness than students of technical universities. The analysis of the obtained results will contribute to the development of ways of forming the ecological consciousness of pupils and students, which is one of the main tasks of ecological and hygienic education and education of young people.