Desenvolvimento epistemológico e avaliação de crenças pessoais relativas ao conhecimento e ao processo de conhecer: estudo de validação da escala de posicionamento epistemológico para estudantes de Doutoramento [Epistemological development and evaluation of personal beliefs about knowledge and the process of knowing: validation study of the Epistemological Position Scale for doctoral students]

Being nowadays a vast scientific domain, the epistemological development theories or personal epistemology are facing numerous challenges regarding the conceptual systematization of their constructs and methodological strategies. This work aims at contributing to the discussion of such issue, by making a proposal for quantitative assessment of the epistemological development, accessed by the beliefs regarding knowledge and knowing. In this study the Epistemological Position Scale (EPE) has been developed and applied to a sample of 429 PhD Students of Portuguese Universities that were in different stages of their studies. The dimensionality analyses performed revealed factorial structures theoretically interpretable, using two alternative forms of item analysis. In the final version, EPE is composed of 25 items within a four factor solution (35.5% of total variance explained), named as follows: (1) epistemological sophistication; (2) epistemological naivety; (3) unchanging knowledge; and (4) learning quickly