A Study of the Attitude of Women towards Environmental Sanitation

Recognizing the relationship between attitude and personal characteristics, the study was taken up to identify the personal characteristics of the self-help group women, household head characterize and the family background their attitude towards environment sanitation with special reference to the areas of cleanliness, self-hygiene, drinking water and sewage and sewage disposal and the effect of the personal characteristics on the environmental sanitation. The study was conducted in the Anantapur district of the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh. The attitude scale to measure environmental sanitation developed by the investigators has been administered to 400 randomly selected self-help group women. The collected data was analyzed by using statistical techniques like percentages, Mean, SD,t test and ANOVA to study the influence of personal characteristics on the attitude towards Environmental sanitation. The finding of the study shows that the self-help group women are not similar in their characteristics. There is a significant difference between caste, and age groups of the women in the areas of cleanliness, Drinking water, and Sewage and sewage disposal but not in the case of sewage and sewage disposal. The women with different levels of education do differ in the areas of selfhygiene, drinking water, Sewage, and sewage Disposal but they do have similar attitudes in the case of cleanliness. The women with number of children do not differ from each other in all the areas. The Household heads of different age and Educational groups differ in their attitude towards Self Hygiene, Drinking water, Sewage and Sewage Disposal but have similar attitudes toward Cleanliness. The Male and Female groups of household heads differ from each other in all the areas of attitude indicating that Gender has a role in attitude formation toward Environmental Sanitation The family background of the women i.e, the members in the family occupation, income ownership of the residence, and type of family has similar attitudes in the areas viz., Cleanliness, Self-Hygiene, Drinking water, Sewage, and sewage Disposal. It indicates that the family background of the sample does not have any role in the formation of attitudes toward Environmental Sanitation