DOI: 10.32322/jhsm.1983418 ISSN: 2636-8579

Carbon footprint awareness among health sciences students: a cross-sectional study at the Faculty of Health Sciences of a University in Ankara

Rojbin Şerda Aydın, Fazlı Altun, Büşra Nur Aksu, Öykü Akyüz, Ceren Bayındır, Nurettin Öner
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Aims: This study aimed to assess carbon footprint awareness among undergraduate students enrolled in a faculty of health sciences at a public university in Ankara, Turkiye, and to examine whether awareness levels differed according to selected sociodemographic characteristics, including gender, academic year, department, housing arrangement, and hometown type.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 416 students selected through proportional stratified sampling across six departments. Data were collected using a personal information form and the Carbon Footprint Awareness Scale, a validated 50-item instrument comprising 10-subscales rated. Confirmatory factor analysis provided partial support for the structure. Following assessment of distributional assumptions, homogeneity of variance, and influential outliers, parametric tests were adopted as the primary analytical approach, with corresponding non-parametric tests reported as a sensitivity analysisResults: The mean Carbon Footprint Awareness Scale score was 5.18, indicating moderately high awareness, with high internal consistency. Female students scored significantly higher than males. Significant interdepartmental differences were identified; child development and social work recorded the highest scores, whereas nutrition and dietetics and orthotics and prosthetics recorded the lowest scores. Academic year showed a statistically significant but negligible-to-small effect, with no pairwise comparison reaching significance after correction for multiple testing. Housing type and hometown size were not significantly associated with awareness.Conclusion: Health sciences undergraduates demonstrate a moderately high level of awareness of their carbon footprint. Departmental variation was the most pronounced finding, underscoring the need for discipline-specific sustainability education. Gender differences were modest and should be interpreted as a secondary finding.

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