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

Abstract

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.