A Scale to Measure Farmers’ Perception towards Climate Vulnerability

Abstract

Perception is influenced by various factors such as attitude, knowledge, information, socio-cultural factors, and previous experience. To understand human behavior, it is necessary to understand the process of perception. The farming community may not have knowledge about the reasons for climate vulnerability but they can understand and realize the consequence of it. Agriculture is susceptible to climate vulnerability through increased temperature and changes in rainfall patterns. These factors affect germination, plant growth, grain development, and maturity in turn productivity. Increased temperature creates heat stress on crops and this adversely affects the production of crops. While the uneven distribution of rainfall creates drier or waterlogged conditions for crops that hampered the growth of crops. In this direction, the research was designed to develop a scale to measure farmers' perception of climate vulnerability. A list of 62 statements indicating the positive or negative perception was considered for scale construction. The statements were edited in light of the informal criteria suggested by Edwards. The total individual score of judges was calculated by summing up the weights given by judges to the individual states. Based on total individual scores, 25 percent of judges with the highest total individual scores and 25 percent of judges with lowest total individual scores were taken assuming that these groups provided criterion groups in terms of high and low evaluated by the individual states.  Item analysis is done by the 't' value for each statement using the formula and procedure given by Edwards. Finally, 52 statements that had a 't' value of 1.75 and above qualified for inclusion in the scale.