4.2 Selection of Items/Indicators of Components
of Vulnerability Index
Items under each component of vulnerability index were selected through expert
consultation and the literature scan. Content validity of items ascertained.
Thirty-eight items covering the different components were selected initially. The
selected items were pretested on a sample of thirty farmers in a non-sampling area.
The items, which were found irrelevant, were dropped. Thirty-two items covering
the different components constituted the final indicators for vulnerability index.
4.3 Computing the Composite Index of Vulnerability
Each component of index consisted of different number of items/indicators and
hence their range of scores was different. Therefore, the scores of all the seven
components were converted into unit scores by using simple range and variance as
given underneath.
U ij ¼
Y ij À Miny i
Maxy i À Miny i
where,
U ij
Unit score of the ith respondent on jth component
Y ij
Value of the ith respondent on the jth component
Max y j Maximum score on the jth component
Min y j Minimum score on the jth component.
The score of each component ranged from 0 to 1 i.e. when y ij is minimum, the
score is 0 and when y ij is maximum the score is 1.
Table 1 Scale values of
components of vulnerability
index
Components
Scale value
Climate
11.53
Infrastructure development
11.44
Social/financial vulnerability
10.16
Agriculture
9.45
Livestock
9.36
Transportation
8.13
An Assessment of Vulnerability of Livestock Farming to Climate Variability
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