‘People are not plants, but both need to grow’: qualitative analysis of the new ecological paradigm scale for children

Helen Kopnina

doi:10.1007/s10669-012-9401-x

Abstract

One of the most popular measures of ecological worldview, predicting environmental attitudes and behaviours, is the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale. Since the adoption of the scale for the use among children by Manoli, Johnson and Dunlap in 2007, it has been applied to measure children’s environmental attitudes across cultures. There is however some controversy about the cross-cultural applicability and the relevance of the NEP scale items. The aim of this article is to contribute to the research about environmental views of children from an anthropological view. In the case study, 59 voluntarily participating students aged between ten and 12 years were interviewed in order to learn about their understanding of the NEP items for children. Group discussions were carried out to discover divergent views on the items, followed by in-depth interviews with 15 pupils. The excerpts from these discussions suggest that children experience ambiguity in interpreting the items of the NEP scale. It is concluded that the effective interpretation of scientific facts requires more nuanced and context-specific approach. The author asks for more qualitative, critical probing in addition to the application of the NEP scale in order to get a fuller response and deeper understanding of environmental attitudes of children.

Highlights

Studies of environmental views come from a wide variety of fields including sociology, psychology, teacher education and the life sciences
We have investigated the theoretical background of studies of environmental attitudes in children
Considering the case study findings, it appears that children seem to have an ambiguous understanding of items from the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scales

Summary

Introduction

Studies of environmental views come from a wide variety of fields including sociology, psychology, teacher education and the life sciences (see for example Wals 2007; Chawla 1999; Kahn and Kellert 2002; Pilgrim et al 2008). While anthropology has historically dealt with subjects ranging from native belief systems and the interaction between humans and their environment, the measurement of environmental attitudes and behaviours were left to the more quantitative social sciences and contributions by anthropologists are surprisingly scarce (Efird 2011; Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet 2011; Kopnina 2012a). The aim of this article is to contribute to the research about environmental views of children from an anthropological view and to enrich the interdisciplinary depository of studies of the cultural variants in perception of environment in children. Studies measuring environmental awareness by school and college students are still limited to sociological, pedagogical or psychological studies (Miller 1975; Kahn 1999). As the author, herself an anthropologist, would argue, there is enough to be added by anthropologists to the existing scholarship of environmental values that could strengthen, complement and Environmentalist (2012) 32:394–404 sometimes challenge more ‘exact’ social sciences (Kopnina 2011b)

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Discussion

Conclusion