Validating Biosecurity Principles for Indigenous Chicken Scale

Abstract

Indigenous chicken are populous in most developing countries, supporting the livelihoods of many rural folks yet are produced under very low or no biosecurity principles, leading to low productivity. Consumers, on the contrary, exhibit high preferences for indigenous chicken. The research question was: what are the consumer attitudes on biosecurity principles for indigenous chicken? The aim of the study was to validate a psychometric scale to measure consumer attitudes on biosecurity principles for indigenous chicken. The sub-aims were to reduce scale so it clearly measures the constructs and to test one hypothesis: H0: There are no significant consumer attitudes on biosecurity principles for indigenous chicken in Kisumu City, Kenya. Starting from a 74-item with 4:1 subject to item ratio biosecurity principles for indigenous chicken scale constructed using Fishbein's Multiattribute model, the hypothesis was tested on pilot data gathered from 300 students of a large university in Kisumu County, Kenya using maximum likelihood factor analysis. Reliabilities for each biosecurity principle ranged from Alpha = .817 to Alpha = .817 respectively. Initial KMO were low ranging between .519 to .595 but improved significantly after refining the scale. Only one factor was extracted from each principle based on theory. Each extracted factor explained variances ranging from 25.099% to 34.307% respectively, though <50 percent. A total of 37 items loaded on these four factors with respect to the four biosecurity principles. The factor matrices for each extracted factor were significant at p = .000 and p < .05 respectively. Thus the null hypothesis was rejected. The results can further be confirmed in subsequent studies.