A Scale to Measure Attitude of Farmers towards Institutional Support Measures for Climate Change

Abstract

Institutional support measures are formulated to induce the agriculture of the nation and also improve the livelihood of the farming community. The study aims to develop a scale to measure the attitude of farmers towards institutional support measures to mitigate the climate change for sustainable livelihood of Cauvery delta zone farmers. Hundred possible statements were prepared to assess the farmer’s attitude towards climate change using the five-point continuum. Since the selected scale values should have equal appearing interval and distributed uniformly along the psychological continuum, it was necessary to form 10 compartments so as to select ten statements at one statement from each compartment. Based on the high S-value and low Q-value each statement was found and the final scale comprised of ten statements. The scale was developed using the equal appearing interval method, which comprises of 10 statements (six positive and four negative). It was found that nearly two third 63.66 per cent of the respondents had moderately favorable attitude towards institutional support measures followed by 19.34 per cent of respondents had less favorable attitude and only 17.00 per cent of respondents had high favourable attitude towards institutional support measures. Hence, medium to high level of favourable attitude towards the institutional support measures on climate change is giving hope for the extension professionals for improved and better implementation of suitable modification in climate change-based programmes to the farmers.