The challenge of measuring children’s attitudes toward wildlife in rural India

Abstract

People’s attitudes influence the nature of their interactions with wildlife and support for conservation. Globally, many environmental education programs seek to influence children’s attitudes toward wildlife and the environment. Understanding these attitudes requires assessment tools that are appropriate to the context and culture. However, most tools have been developed and used in Western developed countries, making their effectiveness elsewhere questionable. The Wild Shaale environmental education program was launched in 2018 in rural India with the goal of enhancing children’s positive attitudes toward wildlife. To design an evaluation for Wild Shaale, we tested five tools to assess children’s attitudes toward wildlife with 1772 students in 56 rural schools. Here, we discuss the challenges encountered while testing these tools and report which tools are likely to be valid measures of variation in children’s attitudes and which may be useful for program evaluation. We provide recommendations for assessing children’s attitudes in similar contexts.

Keywords:

• program evaluation
• India
• attitudes toward wildlife
• international environmental education
• human-wildlife conflict

Acknowledgements

From CWS, we thank Saloni Basrur, Vinaya Bayar, Yasha Chandradeep, Saritha DL, Nagachandan Honnur, Vidya KN, Mahesh Kumar, Mohana Kumar, Vinod Kurli, Anvay Nayak, Priya Ranganathan, Keerthana S, Krithika Sampath, Soumya Sharada, Rochitha Shree, Himani Someshwar, and Vipritha VY. We also thank the Block Education Offices of Gundlupet, Nanjangud, Hunsur and Heggadadevana Kote, and the Measuring Empathy: Collaborative Assessment Project team.

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Geographic Society under Grant #NGS-402E-18, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service under Grant #F17AP01034 and by grants from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and Saving Nature. This work was also supported by grants from Oracle, Alchemy Capital, Cottonwood Foundation, Axis Bank Foundation and Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. Dr. Karanth was supported by the 2019 Rolex Award for Enterprise.