Cross-national data sample on the environmental affection and cognition of adolescent students of varying interests in ecosystem services and sustainability

This article contains cross-national data on the environmental affection and cognition of adolescent students of varying levels of interest in ecosystem services and sustainability, socio-economic and demographic status, and media consumption patterns. The underlying source is the 2015 publicly released student questionnaire data file of the “Programme for International Student assessment (PISA)” (OECD, 2016) , which was used in the studies “Interest in the biosphere and students’ environmental awareness and optimism: A global perspective” (Niankara and Zoungrana, 2018) and “Scientific media dieting and students’ awareness and expectations about the environmental issues of deforestation and species extinction in the middle east and north America: An integrated cross cultural ecologic-economic analysis” (Niankara, 2018). By providing information on 7 major environmental issues (including deforestation, species extinction, air pollution, water shortage, greenhouse gas emission, genetically modified organism, and nuclear waste) in contemporary societies, for 18,7821 students from 50 countries worldwide, this data provides a unique opportunity to investigate various aspects of the world youth population׳s contribution to national sustainability and disease prevention initiatives.


Subject area
Economics More specific subject area Ecological, Environmental and Health Economics Type of data  [4].

Value of the data
This data allows researchers to examine the determinants of adolescent students' environmental affection and cognition in the form of their awareness and expectations about seven major environmental issues including, deforestation, plant and animal species extinction, air pollution, water shortage, greenhouse gas emission, genetically modified organism, and nuclear waste.
By covering adolescent students' from 50 countries and economies over the world, the data allows for not only single country investigations of any or all of the above environmental issues, but also much richer cross-country comparative analyses.
In times of global commitments to sustainability, which requires nations to take into account the social and environmental aspects of their quest for economic growth and development, this data provides a unique opportunity to investigate the potential contribution of digital media to national sustainability and disease prevention initiatives among the world youth population.

Data
This data article relies on information derived from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) [1]. PISA is the triennial survey of adolescent students around the world, lunched by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), to assess the degree of preparedness of students near the end of their compulsory education, for full participation in modern societies. The 2015 PISA provides five main data files including a student-questionnaire data file, a school-questionnaire data file, a teacher-questionnaire data file, a cognitive item data file and a file with questionnaire timing data. Table 1 shows the frequency and percent relative frequency distributions of students across the 50 countries contained in the data.  Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviations) for select key sociodemographic quantitative measurements, while Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics (Absolute frequency and Relative frequency in percent) for select key socio-demographic qualitative measurements.

Experimental design, materials, and methods
The data presented in this article is extracted from the raw SAS (TM) version of the "student questionnaire data file", which is provided as a zipped folder under the name "PUF_SAS_COMBINED_CMB_-STU_QQQ" in [1]. This zipped folder with a total size of 411 Mega Bites (MB) contains four files, two of which are raw SAS format data files named respectively "cy6_ms_cmb_stu_qqq.sas7bdat" and  Note: Abs. Freq. and Rel. Freq. represent respectively the absolute frequency and relative frequency distributions of the qualitative variables "cy6_ms_cmb_stu_qq2.sas7bdat", along with their respective description files "CY6_MS_CMB_STU_QQQ. sas7bdat.format.sas" and "CY6_MS_CMB_STU_QQ2.sas7bdat.format.sas". The presented data is specifically extracted from the file "cy6_ms_cmb_stu_qqq.sas7bdat", using the attached R codes. Due to the big size of the raw data file, and the memory constraint imposed by R, the presented R codes were used to import only the subset of the data containing our variables of interest. The selected subset was then saved into an R object named "dataN", with initially 84 measurements (variables) on 519,334 students. This initial data object was subsequently treated to obtain the final data set "dataMena" with 187821 students. This last version of the data is the one used in [2,4], and presented further in this data article. Further details on the sampling design of the 2015 PISA are found in the OECD report [3].
Below we now describe how the measures of environmental awareness and expectations, along with the measures of interest in the biosphere (ecosystem services and sustainability) and science as a means for disease prevention, and the measures of media consumption, were constructed from the raw data file.
All data treatment, variable reformulation, and descriptive statistics were implemented within the R statistical Software [5]; (see the attached computer codes, for more details).

Self-expressed environmental awareness measures
These are graphically summarized below in Fig. 1, with construction details provided in the attached R codes.

Self-expressed environmental expectations measures
These are graphically summarized below in Fig. 2, with construction details provided in the attached R codes. They are all qualitative ordinal measurements, with four levels ranging from 1-never heard, 2-heard but can't explain, and 3-know and can provide general explanation, and 4-Familiar and can provide detail explanation.

Measures of interest in the biosphere and in science as a means for disease prevention
These are graphically summarized in Fig. 3 below with their construction details provided in the attached R codes.

Measures of weekly frequency of media consumption
See Fig. 4 below for a graphical summary of these variables, and consult the attached R codes for further details on their construction. Fig. 3. Absolute and Percent relative frequency distributions of students' interest in the Biosphere and in Science for disease prevention. Note: IntBisph, IntScPrevDis represent respectively students' self-expressed interests in the Biosphere (Ecosystem services and Sustainability) and in Science as a means for disease prevention. They are both qualitative ordinal measurements, with five levels ranging from 1-don't know, 2-not interested, 3-Hardly interested, 4-Interested, and 5-Highly interested.