The Development of a Readiness Scale for Changing Farmers’ Behaviors of Using Pesticides
Duangjai Wichai PhD*, Pattapong Kessomboon MD, PhD**, John F. Smith PhD**
Affiliation : * Khon Kaen Provincial Health Office, Khon Kaen, Thailand ** Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand
Background and
Objective : Inappropriate pesticide-using behaviors impose significant negative impacts on health and
environment. Developmental programs to change such behaviors of farmers should target those who are ready to change in
order to achieve efficiency. The objective was to develop a readiness scale in changing behavior of using pesticides of farmers.
The scale of this study is expected to be used in recruiting target farmers in developmental programs.
Material and Method: A cross-sectional study was divided into two phases. The first phase, qualitative method, performed
on 17 farmers participated to seek factors related to the farmers’ safe use of pesticides. The second phase, quantitative method
to develop the readiness scale, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was analyzed on 230 farmers and was randomly selected
to measure the scale’s construct validity, internal consistency (reliability), one-dimensionality and the appropriate cut-off
point, respectively.
Results : Farmers’ pesticide use, safety behaviors involved several factors, and are applied to create a set of questions on the
readiness scale; there were 33 main items (with 40 sub-items), which could be grouped into 8 factors associated with farmers
using pesticide safety, the scale, the best way to predict farmers who are ready to change. Finally, they were reduced to 23 main
questions with 30 sub-questions in the scale.
Conclusion : The development of a readiness scale application of changing behaviors as a guide, to assess content validity
using index of item-objective congruence measurement (IOC), the exploratory factor analysis was used to determine an item
and to test reliability on the scale. The scale can be a useful tool for recruiting farmers into intervention program in changing
pesticide use, safety behaviors.
Keywords : Readiness scale, Changing behavior, Pesticide use
