Improving sustainability knowledge has long been central to international efforts to achieve sustainable development. In response to these efforts, which are formalized in Target 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals, a global group of scholars and practitioners, in cooperation with the United Nations, designed and fielded the ‘Sulitest’, a survey tool that assesses sustainability knowledge in a variety of contexts. The Sulitest has been taken by over 160,000 individuals across 63 countries. Despite its substantial use, there is little systematic analysis of the data or the test itself. We analyse the Sulitest using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, common techniques for identifying latent components within observed data. The Sulitest was designed to measure knowledge within four themes; however, this architecture is not supported by the data. Analysis suggests there is no coherent structure of sustainability knowledge. We urge caution to policymakers and educators when using the Sulitest as a diagnostic tool for assessing sustainability knowledge.

长期以来，提高可持续发展知识一直是国际上为实现可持续发展所作的努力的核心。为了应对这些努力，这些努力已在可持续发展目标的目标4.7中正式确定，全球性的学者和实践者小组与联合国合作，设计并部署了“ Sulitest”，这是一种评估工具，用于评估可持续发展目标中的可持续性知识。各种背景。Sulitest已被63个国家/地区的160,000多人参加。尽管有大量用途，但是几乎没有对数据或测试本身进行系统的分析。我们使用探索性和确认性因素分析对Sulitest进行分析，这是在观察到的数据中识别潜在成分的常用技术。Sulitest旨在衡量四个主题内的知识；然而，数据不支持此体系结构。分析表明，没有可持续性知识的连贯结构。在将Sulitest用作评估可持续性知识的诊断工具时，我们敦促政策制定者和教育者谨慎。