Scale to Measure the Attitude of Rural Women towards Self Help Groups

Considering the growing significance of self-help groups for women empowerment, an attitude scale was developed to measure the attitude of rural women towards self-help groups by using equal appearing interval scale method. The present study was conducted in three blocks of Theni district with a sample size of 220 women to measure their attitude towards SHGs. For the purpose of this study, attitude was operationalized as the mental disposition of rural women about self-help groups in varying degrees of favourableness or unfavourableness. Since the selected scale values should have equal appearing interval and distributed uniformly along the psychological continuum, it was necessary to form nine compartments so as to select nine statements at one statement from each compartment. Based on high scale and low Q values, nine attitude statements were finally selected and administered for assessing the womens attitude. The nine attitude items finally selected were arranged randomly in order to avoid biased responses. A five-point continuum of 'strongly agree', 'agree', 'undecided' 'disagree' and 'strongly disagree' was used as response categories.