Uniformity of climate anxiety scales

Silke van Dijk and colleagues from Tilburg University, The Netherlands, identified 12 distinct scales comprising a total of 119 items used to measure climate anxiety, and conducted a content analysis to quantify the overlap between these scales. The results indicate a very weak item content overlap between all the scales, meaning that the symptoms captured by the items were heterogeneous. These results underscore the lack of uniformity in assessing climate anxiety and highlight the need to properly define and operationalize this concept. For future research, the authors recommend enhancing data-driven comparisons of the content of the scales, exploring a consensus on the definition and assessment of climate anxiety, and developing a reliable and generalizable measurement scale.

Original reference: J. Anxiety Disord. 109, 102957 (2025)