Design and Psychometric Properties of the BAtSS: A New Tool to Assess Attitudes towards Bats

Abstract

Despite the benefits that bats offer the ecosystem, these animals are feared and attacked. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated this situation. Today there is an urgent need to address the human-bat conflict to develop conservation policies. Understanding peoples’ attitudes towards bats are critical for this process. This study aimed to design the Bats Attitudes Standard Scale (BAtSS) and to analyze its psychometric properties. We developed an initial version of the scale in which we established the content validity; we analyzed the items and structure in a pilot sample. In the next phase, we examined psychometric properties in a sample of 1639 Chileans. The final BAtSS consists of 34 Likert-type items configured in an oblique-hierarchical structure of four factors (scientistic, positivistic, negativistic, and myths) and three facets (emotional negativistic, behavioral negativistic, and cognitive negativistic). It presents adequate internal consistency, and the analysis of concurrent validity confirms the scale’s capacity to discriminate between groups. Women and participants with a lower level of education are more negativistic and less positivistic. People with a higher level of education have a less mythological view of bats. We also analyzed the items under the assumptions of item response theory (IRT).