A Standardized Scale to Measure Attitude of Agricultural Scientists towards ICT

Abstract

Advancement of Information Communication Technologies has become a crucial factor in improving decision making capacity of agricultural scientists, facilitating retrieval and sharing of agricultural information. This article aims at designing and validating a psychometric scale on basis of Likert’s method of summated ratings to assess the attitude of agricultural scientist towards information communication technologies. Attitude is a developed feeling or emotion towards a psychological object which helps an individual to give a verdict on that psychological object. Commencing with initial set of 70 statements prepared/developed on the basis of insights from literature review of previous empirical research on attitude scales towards ICT, final scale constituted of 17 statements. The items were subjected to relevancy test and items having ‘t’ value higher than 1.75 were selected in final scale. On the basis of and ‘t’ value 17 statements constituted the final scale. The aggregate scale was verified for internal consistency and content validity. Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.75 and whole test reliability value of 0.55 computed using the Spearman-Brown Prophecy formula established satisfactory level of internal consistency as reliability of the scale. Content validation of scale was ensured by administering the selected items to judges. The standardized scale allows quantitative assessment of agricultural scientist and would have practical applicability in discovering the intensity of attitude of agricultural scientist and thus facilitates to take right decisions by policy makers.