Stealth Assessment of Children’s Connection to Nature in a Serious Game

Abstract

Contemporary societies are experiencing a growing disconnection between children and the natural environment, often described as “nature-deficit disorder.” Measuring children’s attitudes toward nature is therefore important for environmental education. However, traditional self-report questionnaires pose challenges for young learners due to abstract constructs and social desirability bias. This study explores stealth assessment embedded in a serious game as an alternative method for measuring children’s connection to nature. The study adopts an applied developmental design with a correlational validation approach implemented using the Evidence Centered Design (ECD) framework. A web-based serious game titled Tito was developed for this study based on the theoretical structure of the Connection to Nature Index (CNI). The game operationalizes four CNI dimensions—enjoyment, empathy, oneness, and responsibility—through environmental scenarios such as planting seeds, protecting insects and plants, exploring natural soundscapes, and cleaning environmental waste. Behavioral telemetry data were recorded unobtrusively during gameplay without interrupting the player’s experience. Participants included 83 fourth-grade students (aged 10–11) from an elementary school in Tehran. After completing the standard CNI questionnaire, students played the game individually for eight minutes while behavioral logs were collected and analyzed. To complement the quantitative data, qualitative insights were also gathered through brief interviews with participating students and observational notes recorded during gameplay. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a statistically significant positive relationship between the stealth assessment scores derived from gameplay and the traditional CNI scores (r = 0.33, p = 0.002). Additional analyses showed significant correlations for all four subdimensions, including enjoyment (r = 0.28, p = 0.010), responsibility (r = 0.27, p = 0.013), empathy (r = 0.24, p = 0.028), and oneness with nature (r = 0.23, p = 0.036). Qualitative observations and short student interviews further supported these findings, revealing behavioral patterns and reflections that were consistent with the gameplay indicators used in the stealth assessment. These findings suggest that stealth assessment embedded in serious games can provide a valid and ecologically meaningful alternative to traditional self-report instruments for evaluating children’s connection to nature.