A scale to quantify the crisis management behaviour of sugarcane growers

Abstract

During 2021–2022, an effort was made to produce a standardised scale to evaluate how sugarcane growers handle crisis circumstances while keeping in mind the current situations. Decision-making abilities, adaptability, and economic performance were recognised as the three main facets of sugarcane grower’s CMB. These dimensions were chosen to represent all behavioural, crisis, and its management components at all levels as well as the effectiveness of crisis management is evaluated using economic performance. The scale items were shaped with the best efforts to accurately reflect the behavioural traits of knowledge, attitude, skills, and confidence as well as the various crisis management activities viz., preparations, mitigations, interventions, and rehabilitation and reconstruction undertaken by sugarcane farmers to deal with crises. The summated rating method with necessary modifications recommended by Likert and Edward has been employed to construct the scale. The ultimate sugarcane grower’s CMB scale was composed of 82 statements, which were divided into three categories according to decision-making ability (11 statements), adaptability (71 statements distributed across 8 sub dimensions), and economic performance (measured using standard formulas). The scale’s reliability and validity are ascertained by administering to 32 farmers in the Mandya district who cultivate sugarcane in 2020–21. Using the split half technique of reliability, it was discovered that the generated CMB scale was extremely dependable, with a reliability score of 0.9195. With a statistical validity coefficient of 0.9589, both the content and statistical validities were extremely valid.