The Nature Contact Questionnaire: A measure of healthy workplace exposure

Understanding and promoting healthy workplaces is an important and growing area of interest in occupational health. Nature contact is a central component to the study of and promotion of healthy places. Previous findings suggest that nature contact influences health via stress appraisal process. Currently, there are no known comprehensive valid and reliable measures of nature contact, which presents obstacles to research and worksite health promotion. Objective: This study was designed to develop and test an instrument to measure nature contact at work, entitled the Nature Contact Questionnaire (NCQ), 16-item self-reported checklist to measure actual exposure. Participants: A sample of 503 (30% response rate) office staff completed the questionnaire. Methods: Office staff were sent an email with a link to the electronic survey twice, two weeks apart. Results: Content and construct validity (KMO = 0.68), internal consistency (Alpha = 0.64), and test-retest reliability (r = 0.85, p < 0.01) were established. Conclusions: The NCQ is the first known comprehensive, reliable and valid survey to measure nature contact, which allows research to compare forms of nature contact to best inform practice and design of healthy places.