Construction and Standardization of a Scale to Measure Socioeconomic Status of Heads of Rural Households in the Funtua Zone of Kaduna State

The paper reports the methodology of the development of a scale to measure socioeconomics status of heads of rural households (Gandu) in the Funtua Zone in Kaduna State of Nigeria. A universe of interest containing about 105 items of socioeconomic signifi­cance was made up by selection from observation in a typical village setting in the study area. After pre-testing the instrument with 105 items, ambiguous items were dropped leaving 90 items. In yalidating the items, item analysis procedure was carried out on the 90 items in order to select the items that best differentiated between high and low possession of socioeconomic status ·among the farmers. Consequently, 38 items were selected from the item validation process. These items being those in which significant difference were found between proportions in the highest and lowest 25 per cent of the farmers possessing the items. Weighting of the item was carried out using the Sigma method of scoring which assigned greater scores to valid items which were possessed by only few farmers and expressing such items scores in _standard units. Results of validity and reliability tests carried out on the constructed standardized scale indicated that the scale was quite vaild and reliable.