Construction and initial validation of the scale “Goals for Future Design of the 2030 Agenda”

Abstract

Sustainable development goals are used as guidance for future career and life design. The importance of including young people in the sustainability process is recognized also by recent vocational guidance literature. Nevertheless, the assessment of the Sustainable Development Goals itself presents a challenge. For these reasons, we validated a specific assessment instrument to investigate adolescents’ propensity to point out how much each of the 2030 Agenda goals for sustainable development may affect their future design. This article reports the development and psychometric requisites of the “Goals for Future Design of the 2030 Agenda.” The scale recalls the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The study involved 554 high school students. Initial exploratory factor analysis factorial structure showed a four-factor structure of the 17-item scale: (1) social/health, (2) environment/nature, (3) human rights/equal economic development, and (4) policy and democracy. A single-factor second-order structure also emerged from the confirmatory factor analysis. The results support the use of the scale in vocational guidance and career counselling activities to promote adolescents’ life design in a sustainable and inclusive way.