LIRDHIST Methodology and results to analyse conceptions on nature utilization and preservation among teachers from 16 countries François Munoz, Franz Bogner, Pierre Clément and Graça S. Carvalho Environmental Psychology Conference 2007 – Bayreuth, Germany September

LIRDHIST The Biohead-Citizen project Scientific issues in biology, health and environment Environmental Education Health Education Human Reproduction and Sex Education Genetic and biological determinism Evolution

LIRDHIST The Biohead-Citizen project Conceptions of (future) teachers The main goal is to clarify their structure and analyse them as social representations Personal information A specific part of the questionnaire + disseminated political questions Throughout 16 countries Potential impact on what is taught at school

LIRDHIST Environmental Education Teachers’ environmental attitudes “Collection of beliefs, affect and behavioural intentions a person holds regarding environmentally related activities or issues” (Schultz et al, 2004) Cognitive structure Goal: Better prediction of behaviours Two-dimensional ecocentric-anthropocentric paradigm (Thompson and Barton, 1994; Bogner et al, 2000)

LIRDHIST The Biohead-Citizen questionnaire Structure of questions = issues of interest Environmental attitudes Utilization (anthropocentric) Preservation (ecolocentric) Question 1 Question 2 … A4 A8

LIRDHIST The Biohead-Citizen questionnaire Structure of individuals = sampling groups Country P1 - Portugal P2 - France P3 - Germany … Teaching groups InB – In service biology secondary PreP – Pre service secondary …

LIRDHIST Describing the data Answers to the questions A numeric coding is used A16:Our planet has unlimited natural resources 4321 I agree I don’t agree Likert scale PTFIHUROMAFRSNITCYESLBTN

LIRDHIST Describing the data Answers to the questions A16:Our planet has unlimited natural resources

LIRDHIST Multivariate statistical analysis Purposes Global dependence between questions/issues according to theoretical expectations Different attitudes across sampling groups: regarding all issues. regarding particular issues Structure of questions Structure of individuals

LIRDHIST A1A4A5A7 Q Q Q Q Q V1V2V3V4 Q Q Q Q Q Multivariate statistical analysis Basic principle Questionnaire New variables Capturing synthetic components

LIRDHIST Properties of the new components Independence : no correlation between the components Variance partition: ordering by decreasing variance V1V2V3V4 A A A A Components are linear combinations of questions Multivariate statistical analysis V1 = 0.5A A A A4

LIRDHIST Multivariate statistical analysis Main methods available Correspondance Analysis (CA): chi-square distance, well suited to categorical data. Principal Component Analysis (PCA): euclidean distance between individuals. Only with quantitative data

LIRDHIST V1V2 Multivariate statistical analysis Featuring the variation in attitudes Variance according to the components

LIRDHIST 15 questions– Principal Component Analysis Arrow for Likert scale 4321 Characterizing the attitudes Structure of attitudes Environmental attitudes Preservation Utilization V1 V2

LIRDHIST Environmental attitudes What most differentiates the attitudes in socio-cultural groups Look for combinations of questions that most differentiate the groups One can relate the new components to the structure of the basic PCA analysis Between-group analysis

LIRDHIST Structure of individuals What most differentiates the groups 16 country groups U U U U U UU

LIRDHIST Structure of individuals Is the differentiation significant ? Country groups Randomization test Actual differentiation p-value < 0.001

LIRDHIST Structure of individuals What most differentiates the groups This kind of analysis may be applied either to separate issues or to the whole questionnaire. One may investigate differentiation between countries, religions, teaching groups… according to specific hypotheses. Between-group analysis Analysis on groups inside any country.

LIRDHIST Structure of individuals Controlling for the effect of country Look for attitudes that are independent from the teachers’ nationality Orthogonal analysis Point out if a common structure emerges throughout the countries

LIRDHIST Structure of individuals Orthogonal analysis controlling for country No difference between countries Preservation Utilization

LIRDHIST Looking for causes Orthogonal analysis Analysing attitudes independently from the effect of a given factor Controlling the effect of one factor We separate out the effect of both factors Independent test of another factor

LIRDHIST Looking for causes Some factors can be counfounding Religion and country are not independent

LIRDHIST 1 - Orthogonal analysis controlling for religion No difference between religion groups Looking for causes

LIRDHIST 2 - Independent effect of country Differences between countries independent from religion Looking for causes

LIRDHIST Analysis of the cognitive structure Non-parametric statistical framework 1- Global PCA: effect of both A and B Investigating the effect of two factors A and B 2- Orthogonal analysis controlling for A: independent effect of B 3- Orthogonal analysis controlling for B: independent effect of A 4- Orthogonal analysis controlling for A and B: effect of the interaction between A and B

LIRDHIST Opening up the discussion Multivariate analysis helps clarifying the structure of environmental attitudes What are the attitudes according to which individuals are most contrasting? Specific approaches allow testing hypotheses What most differentiate groups of individuals?  Between-group analysis Can we distinguish the effects of related factors?  Orthogonal analysis Randomization tests

LIRDHIST Opening up the discussion Multivariate analysis helps clarifying the structure of environmental attitudes What are the attitudes according to which individuals are most contrasting? Specific approaches allow testing hypotheses What most differentiate groups of individuals?  Between-group analysis Can we distinguish the effects of related factors?  Orthogonal analysis Randomization tests

LIRDHIST 15 questions– Principal Component Analysis Grouped questions = high positive correlation Orthogonal questions = no correlation Opposite questions = high negative correlation Preservation Utilization Environmental attitudes Structure of attitudes