Adaptação do New Ecological Paradigm Scale for Children para o contexto brasileiro

Abstract

Environmental attitudes may be comprehended as a collection of beliefs, affect, and behavioral intentions a person holds regarding environmentally related activities or issues. Considering that environmental protection is one of the pillars of the sustainable development model, the current research aims to line up the academic environment with the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 strengthen. Studies indicate the importance of study and develop environmental attitudes and behaviors on children to the futures generations. Nevertheless, is mentioned that little is known about the subject. Therefore, aiming to contribute to the development of this area, the purpose of the current study was to adapt the New Ecological Paradigm Scale for Children (NEP C), an environmental attitudes measure instrument in children, to a Brazilian context. To achieve these goals, three studies were performed: 1) semantic adaptation of NEP C for the Brazilian Portuguese; 2) pilot study; and 3) analysis of psychometric properties from the instrument based on studies 1 and 2 results. The first study was performed in collaboration with a multidisciplinary committee formed by four specialists on psychology and pedagogy. The Content Validity Coefficient (CVC) was used to assess items according to the multidisciplinary committee scores. The coefficient for all 10 items was considered acceptable. The second consisted of a pilot study composed of five children obtained from the target population. After this essay, item 4 was slightly modified. The third study evaluated the version semantically adapted version (Scale NEP C BR), using a sample of 202 Brazilians participants with ages varying between 9 and 13 years old, also regularly enrolled in school. Through Factorial Analysis and Network Analysis, this study evaluated the scale structure. Furthermore, differences among gender and environmental education were also analyzed. The results were compared with the original instrument study, as well as subsequent research. It was concluded that the instrument NEP C has semantic equivalency with the original scale and shows evidence that can be applied in the Brazilian population.