Scale to measure the attitude of farmers towards district agro-met units (DAMUS) Project

Abstract

Agriculture in India is heavily dependent on weather, with crop yields largely determined by the monsoon season. Farmers require timely and accurate weather information to make informed decisions regarding harvesting, watering, planting, and pest control. The need for such information has become even more critical due to the increased uncertainty in weather patterns caused by climate change. Weather services like the District Agro-Met Units (DAMUs) provide localized and detailed forecasts that are essential for farmers to enhance their productivity and resilience to adverse weather conditions. Given the importance of studying farmers' attitudes towards the DAMUs project, a scale has been developed to measure these attitudes. The Scale Product Method was employed, which combines Thurstone’s technique of equal appearing interval scale for item selection with Likert’s technique of summated rating. The development process began with identifying key aspects and collecting relevant items. This was followed by a relevancy and item analysis, and finally, checking the reliability and validity to ensure precision and consistency of the results. Initially, 47 statements were selected, and through this process, 15 statements were ultimately retained in the scale to measure the attitude of farmers towards DAMUs project. The developed scale was found to be reliable.