How to Measure The Restorative Quality of Environments: The PRS-11

The Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS) has been reported relatively frequently in the literature, despite the psychometric and factorial properties of the scale not being well established. We argue that a detailed understanding of the meaning of individual items is the proper starting point for scale development and used this approach to develop shorter (11-item rather than 26-item) parallel versions in both Italian and English. Data collected from samples of Italian (n = 230) and English speakers (n = 100) were analysed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), comparing a 5 models based on previous published research and underlying theory. A four-factor model that mirrored four elements of Attention Restoration Theory (ART) had the best fit to the data. The resulting composite scale was invariant across nationality and gender. (c) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.