Desenvolvimento de uma escala de atitude de educadores frente ao uso de álcool, tabaco e outras drogas

Abstract

Introduction: Developing a measure to assess the attitude about the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs for educators is important since it can help professionals attending training programs and the consequent quality in the assessment of change in their attitudes. Objective: In this sense, the general objective of this study is to develop a scale to assess the attitude of teachers towards the use of drugs based on the Social Cognitive Psychology. Methodology: In order to accomplish the proposed objective, the study was divided into two stages. First there was the construction of the instrument, following the "Standard for Educational and Psychological Testing": 1) First there was the selection of existing instruments; 2) thematic adaptation and metric adaptation of items from those instruments; 3) dimension allocation of items; 4) evaluation of experts, 5) evaluation of the judge; 6) focus group, and finally, 8) pre-test. In the second stage of the study, Drug Use on Educators' Attitude Scale was applied to 2766 educators from public schools, in order to verify its psychometric properties. Results: Upon completion of the necessary procedures for the construction of the scale, we obtained an instrument with 39 items, which were applied in teachers and presented satisfactory validity of evidence. After principal component analysis, eight items were eliminated from scale. The new version comprised 31 items, which through confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory, evidenced the two dimension scale: A scale that measures the cognitive aspects of attitude consisting of 16 items, and a range of affective aspects of attitude, composed of 15 items. However difficult to assess the affective dimension of attitude, especially because social desirability of respondents, the scale showed satisfactory results how its psychometric properties, indicating its use for the population of educators. Conclusion: Despite the limitations, the field progresses as the cognitive and affective dimension of attitude can be assessed satisfactorily and it is essential for better preparation of the practices of prevention of drug use in the school context, since the school is strategic environment of these actions with children and teenagers.