Scale to Measure Attitude of Farmers towards Recommended Water Management Technologies and Practices

Recommended water management technologies and practices are a number of measures developed for the specific crop of varied farming systems as a resolution for conserving water in agriculture. These technologies are developed after meticulous research and recommended to farmers by research institutes of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), State Agricultural University or other organisation. In This Paper, a scale is developed that can be used to assess the attitude of farmers towards recommended water management technologies and practices to frame various developmental programs. Attitude is a developed feeling or emotion about some psychological object which helps an individual to give a verdict on that psychological object. The scale is developed to measure the attitude of farmers towards recommended water management technologies and practices for which ‘Likert method of summated ratings’ is followed.

A total of 57 statements results after edition of 85 statements as per the criteria suggested by Edwards [1], and sent to 100 extension specialists working in various research and extension wings of ICAR, State Agricultural Universities throughout the country for critical evaluation of statements on a 5 point continuum. The responses received from 46 judges out of 100, an aggregate of 29 statements are selected based on the relevancy test i.e., relevancy weight, percentage and mean relevancy scores. Further, the statements are subjected to item analysis by administering them to 100 farmers from a non-sample area. Finally a total of 12 statements are selected based on the ‘t’ values (> 2.75) resulted from the item analysis and included in the final scale. Thus, the instrument developed to measure the attitude of farmers towards recommended water management technologies, and practices consist of 6 positive and 6 negative attitude statements.