Proposition of diagnostic tool to provide indicatives about the understanding of biological knowledge and their interrelationships

Abstract

This paper describes the developing and validating steps of a Likert's evaluative scale. The aim is to systematize the answers of Biological Sciences students about to: 1) Understanding or not understanding the scientific knowledge; and 2) If there is a relationship among scientific concepts in order to contemplate a systemic thinking about natural phenomena. The described scale was validated by Cronbach's Alpha tests (alpha = 0.741), KMO (0.779) and Bartlett (0.000) and a Multivariate Analysis was fulfilled, type Principal Component Analysis (PCA). We understood this kind of instrument allows a large amount of data to be collected and it groups can be compared efficiently, which justified the development of evaluative scale presented here.