Abstract
The biodiversity crisis is one of the most pressing problems of our time. Arid and semi-arid environments are the refuge of a very important part of global biodiversity, they provide essential ecosystem services and are extremely fragile, which makes their protection necessary. However, these habitats are often undervalued and even generate rejection among the population, which creates problems for their conservation. This all entails the need to implement educational and awareness strategies in regard to this issue. To this end, a project was undertaken with secondary school students in the southeast of Spain, the driest territory in Europe. In this work we focus on the development and validation of an instrument designed to assess the effectiveness of instruction carried out to improve attitudes towards drylands. It is a photo-based scale, an innovative instrument that poses a Likert-type questionnaire referring to each one of the habitats under consideration, whose development involved 490 participants. The standardization criteria established for selecting the photos and the criteria or attributes on which the wordings of the questionnaire items were to be based comprised two of the basic pillars of this methodological proposal. Its psychometric properties support its validity and reliability to a sufficient degree for use in educational research projects with students aged 13 to 15 in these types of semi-arid habitats. However, indications are provided showing that the scale could be applied to other ages and habitats, even on an international scale, given the extent of arid zones around the world.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
To the Department of Education of the Autonomous Government of Andalusia (Spain), which approved the educational research project (File PIV-034/14) which gave rise to this study. To the teaching staff who participated in it: María Ballester Beltrán, José M. Calahorra García, Esther Gálvez Jiménez, Anabel González Carmona, Vanessa Olivares Gómez, Victoria Pamies Pacheco, Rosario Ruiz Román, María Luisa Sánchez Cano, Víctor Serrano Virgil, Ana J. Sola Gómez, Marcos Diéguez Vidal, Josefa Tomás Ruiz and Alberto Torres Rubio. To Francisca L. Fernández Ortega for his active participation and theoretical contributions on attitudes. To Pedro de la Rosa Flores for his invaluable assistance in the selection of the photographs. To David Aguilera Morales for his constructive criticism and methodological suggestions. To Diego Fernando Rivera Camacho for his clarifications on factor analysis and structural equations. Thanks to CEIP Ntra. Sra. Del Rosario, Ecoescuela de Guazamara, because it is where the project was created. This research has been sponsored by Projects PID2020-116097RB-I00 (Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain), UAL2020-SEJ-D1784 FEDER (European Regional Development Fund) and P20_00094 (Andalusian Government), European Union’s Horizon 2020 (H2020-MSCA-RISE-777803) and proyect sponsored by European Union, Junta de Andalucía and University of Almería UAL2020-RNM-B2007.
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This work has been partially financed by the projects PGC2018-097988-A-I00, PID2020-116097RB-I00, and UAL2020-SEJ-D1784 funded by FEDER/Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCI) of Spain-State Research Agency (AEI) and P20_00094 funded by Andalusia Government.
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Conceptualization: Francisco López-de-Haro, María Martínez-Chico, Fabián Martínez-Hernández, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Data curation: Francisco López-de-Haro; Software: Javier López-Tomás; Formal analysis: Francisco López-de-Haro, Javier López Tomás, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Supervision: Francisco López-de-Haro, María Martínez-Chico, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Funding acquisition: María Martínez-Chico, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Investigation: Francisco López-de-Haro, Fabián Martínez-Hernández, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Visualization: Francisco López-de-Haro, Javier López Tomás, María Martínez-Chico, Fabián Martínez-Hernández, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Methodology: Francisco López-de-Haro, María Martínez-Chico, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Writing-original draft: Francisco López-de-Haro; Project administration: Francisco López-de-Haro, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda; Writing-review and edition: Francisco López-de-Haro, Javier López Tomás, María Martínez-Chico, Fabián Martínez-Hernández, Juan Francisco Mota Poveda. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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López-de-Haro, F., Martínez-Chico, M., Martínez-Hernández, F. et al. Development and validation of a photo-based attitudes scale towards the conservation of semi-arid habitats. Biodivers Conserv 32, 4805–4829 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-023-02729-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-023-02729-1