New water culture versus the traditional design and validation of a questionnaire to discriminate between both

Abstract

This article addresses the process of designing and validating a questionnaire on the New Water Culture, which aims to collect information on various issues related to water, such as its man-agement, savings, and consumption. The questionnaire was subjected to a double validation pro-cess: an evaluation by a panel of experts, including members of the New Water Culture Foundation, and a pilot study, which allowed us to estimate the validation of the content as well as the corre-sponding internal consistency of the questionnaire. The construction and validation process re-sulted in a questionnaire consisting of 27 items with a total of 71 variables distributed in four sec-tions: the first is related to scarcity, quantity, and distribution of water; the second collects questions about the different dimensions of water; the third analyses the different ways of carrying out water management; and the fourth and last section is related to personal actions associated with water. The reliability study showed a Cronbach alpha of 0.913, which demonstrates the development of a robust and reliable instrument allowing the identification of the most problematic issues associated with the New Water Culture.