Development and Standardisation of Scale to Measure Attitude of the Farmers towards Natural Farming: A Sustainable Environmental Approach

Abstract

Attitude is defined as the degree of favourable or unfavourable feeling of the farmers towards natural farming. Natural farming, a sustainable agricultural practice that eschews synthetic inputs, has garnered significant interest globally for its potential to enhance soil health, biodiversity and crop resilience. Understanding farmer’s attitude towards natural farming is crucial for its widespread adoption. It is the accepted fact that attitude of an individual plays an important role in determining ones behaviour. Keeping this in view a standardized scale has been developed to assess the attitude of the farmers towards natural farming. The Likert’s summated rating method was used to construct the scale. The process started with collection of items followed by relevancy testing and item analysis and checking the reliability and validity for precision and consistency. A total of twenty four statements were finally retained for measuring attitude of the farmers towards natural farming, out of which fourteen statements were positive and ten statements were negative. The reliability was checked using split-half method and validity was examined through content validity. The scale developed was found highly reliable and valid.