values to positive attitudes towards traditional farming, while less positive and negative

views were assigned lower point values. I added the point values together to give each

participant a summative attitude score (Sullivan, 2001). The scale measured the degree

to which participant attitude is positive or negative toward traditional farming.

 I did the following to standardize the scale. I developed a range of 153 statements

with two faculty members from the University of Florida. I placed these statements in

five categories: very positive, positive, neutral, negative and very negative. A panel of 15

colleagues scored the 153 items in a scalar response format with choices ranging from

very weak to very strong to determine how favorable or unfavorable each statement was.

 I then selected statements with the highest item-total correlation using Cronbach's

alpha. I asked a panel of 12 experts from the southeastern United States to respond to the

remaining 40 items. I chose respondents based on their familiarity with agriculture and

also on their explicitly stated view about traditional farming. Four respondents stated that

they had a positive view of traditional farming, four stated that they had neutral views

and four stated that they had negative views. I ran two t-tests for each item to determine

which of the statements best differentiated between positive and negative attitudes to

increase the discriminatory power of the scale. I eliminated statements based on neutral

responses and inconsistency between the general opinion and the marked responses.

 I used p-values to determine the items for each scale that significantly differentiated

between attitudes. Sixteen items remained and maintained fairly equal positive and

negative responses. I calculated Cronbach's alpha for the scale after data collection. I did

not delete any to increase the Cronbach's alpha and item-total correlations. The final

Cronbach's alpha was 0.91 and the average item-total correlation was 0.42 (Appendix C,

Table 1).