Propriedades psicométricas da versão brasileira da escala de novo paradigma ecológico: revisada

Abstract

The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP-R) is one of the hallmarks for the measurement of ecological attitudes. Attention has been given to its psychometric properties during the last ten years, but no analyses have been conducted until now using an Item Response Theory (IRT) approach. With this purpose, a sample of 410 recruited responders answered the NEP-R's 15 items in Brazilian Portuguese. An item analysis was conducted considering: dimensionality; reliability; discrimination; item information; and item/person hierarchy. The results for the principal component analysis of standardized residues supports a unidimensional structure. Results for item fit coefficients (INFIT and OUTFIT) indicate that the items have good predictive power for the response patterns in the latent trait continuum representing ecocentrism. In turn, the results for person discrimination and item hierarchy point out that the scale is restricted as to the levels of difficulty it represents. The findings include that the most revealing items for environmental attitudes in a Brazilian sample consist of the set of items representing the "limits of growth" facet.