Examine the factors that strengthen or weaken the attitude-behaviour relation. How can a District Education Officer leverage this knowledge to reduce school dropout among adolescent girls?
Subtopic: Section A · Attitude · Attitude-behaviour relation
How to structure your answer
Define: attitudes predict behaviour weakly unless strength, specificity, accessibility and situational support align (Ajzen-Fishbein TPB).
Illustrate: parents value girls' education in the abstract but withdraw daughters at Class IX.
Apply: Theory of Planned Behaviour — attitude + subjective norm + perceived control.
Conclude: a DEO must work on social norms and on perceived barriers simultaneously.
Written within the word limit
143 words · target 150 words · 9 min
Definition: The attitude-behaviour relation strengthens with specificity, accessibility, personal relevance and social-norm alignment; it weakens with normative conflict, low self-efficacy and structural barriers such as distance, cost and household opposition.
Illustration: A District Education Officer reducing adolescent-girls' dropout cannot stop at generic 'education is good' messaging. Specificity demands intervention at exact transition points — class 8 to 9 and menstruation-onset. Accessibility requires deploying ASHA and Anganwadi outreach at home, where the household attitude is formed. Personal relevance is illustrated by Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas with hostels, bicycles and sanitary-pad supply. Social-norm alignment is built through fathers' and brothers' group meetings, neutralising the household veto. Self-efficacy is enabled by remedial coaching, and Tamil Nadu's Pudhumai Penn cash-transfer scheme bridges structural barriers that mere persuasion cannot remove.
Application: SAMAGRA Shiksha guidelines now combine these levers, treating attitude-behaviour alignment as a multi-channel administrative project rather than a communications campaign.
What an examiner expects to see
- Fishbein-Ajzen TPB — attitude + norm + perceived behavioural control
- Attitude-behaviour gap narrows with specificity and immediacy
- Subjective norm — peer mothers, panchayat elders
- Perceived control — toilets, transport, sanitary-napkin access (Kishori Shakti Yojana)
- Implementation intentions (Gollwitzer) — if-then plans
- Beti Bachao Beti Padhao monitoring across 405 districts
Concrete cases, schemes and judgments
- Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan KGBV residential schools for adolescent girls
- Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana incentive-linked retention
- Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya enrolment growth 2014-23