Resumo

CAMPOS U, Maria Lorena; PASQUALI, Carlota  e  PEINADO, Sofía. Psicometric evaluation of an instrument for measuring children pro environmental attitudes in venezuelan schools. Paradìgma [online]. 2008, vol.29, n.2, pp.135-153. ISSN 1011-2251.

In the current circumstances of environmental damage that we can see through climatic changes and deterioration of quality of life, it has become paramount to promote behavioral change towards the recovery and preservation of the environment. We introduce here the psychometric assessment of an instrument translated and adapted for measuring environmental attitudes in children, to be used at the local level. The original instrument was named the Children's Attitudes toward the Environment Scale [CATES], presented by Musser and Malkus (1994). For adaptation and evaluation of some psychometric properties of this scale, the instrument was applied to a sample of 227 students from two venezuelan public schools where recycling programs had been conducted. For instrument validation, a principal components analysis with Varimax rotation was performed. As a result, we propose one Escala de Medición de Actitudes Pro ambientales Infantiles [EMAPI], with two subscales of attitudes towards the environment and whose internal consistency was high ( = .626). This work contributes to the study of attitudes formation in environmental education school activities, providing a reliable and valid instrument for assessing pro environmental attitude of school children in Venezuelan context.

Palavras-chave : Pro Environmental Children Attitudes; Attitudes Scale; Environmental Education.