A Construction and Administration of Attitude Scale for Measuring the Effectiveness of Farm Broadcast Programmes in Andhra Pradesh State of India

The aim of the study is to construct and administer the attitude scale to measure effectiveness of farm broadcast programmes in Andhra Pradesh state of India. The problem statement of the study is, there is no proper instrument available to measure the effectiveness of farm broadcast programmes, hence an effort was made to construct an instrument i.e., effectiveness scale and administered to selected farmers.

The research methodology is that, the Likert method of summated rating procedure was employed in the research methodology to construct attitude scale on effectiveness of farm broadcast programmes. One hundred and forty – eight statements covering all aspects of subject viz., effectiveness, were collected thorough review of literature, expert opinion and through personal experience in the field of agricultural extension and the said statements were edited on the basis of criteria suggested by Thurstone and Chave, Likert and Edward.

Data analysis and research findings is, initially selected 148 statements were, subjected to judge’s opinion on a five-point continuum ranging from most relevant to least relevant viz; most relevant, relevant, undecided, less relevant and least relevant with scoring patterns of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Sixty judges responded back by sending their judgment. The scale values i.e., t-values were computed for 148 statements. The ‘t’ value equal to or greater than 1.75 were finally selected and included in the scale. Out of 148, only 62 statements (Appendix II) found to have ‘t – value’ more than or equal to 1.75 were finally included in the scale. To find out the reliability of the scale ‘split- half’ (Garrett and Woodworth, 1973) method was used. The sixty-two selected items were divided into two equal halves by odd-even method (Singh, 1998). The two halves were administered separately to 50 televiewing farmers in a non-sample area. The score for each farmer was recorded separately for even and odd questions based on five-point continuum i.e., 5,4,3,2 and 1 for positive statement and vice-verse for negative statement. Then, scores were summed to get the total score of each televiewing farmer. The scores were subjected to Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) between the odd and even-numbered item scores. The resulting coefficient is an estimate of the half-test reliability i.e., the reliability of the odd-numbered items, or the even-numbered items, but not both combined. The value of ‘r’ is 0.73, so, further the reliability coefficient of the whole test was computed using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula because only half the number of items were used so the reliability coefficient was reduced. Hence, in order to get a better estimate of the reliability of the full test we apply this correction. The whole test reliability (rtt) was 0.84. According to Singh (1998), when the mean scores of the two groups are of narrow range, a reliability coefficient of 0.50 or 0.60 would suffice. Hence, the constructed scale was reliable as the rtt was greater than 0.60. The sixty-two items selected were arranged randomly in order to avoid biased responses.

For administration of the scale Andhra Pradesh state of India was selected purposively, as the researcher hails from that state. Out of 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh 4 districts were selected randomly. From each selected district 2 mandals and from each mandal 2 villages were selected randomly. There by total villages become 16 and from each village 15 televiewing farmers were selected randomly, there by total sample became 240.

The final scale was then, administered to 240 televiewing farmers, selected to measure the effectiveness of farm broadcasts. The respondents were asked to rate each statement on a five-point continuum from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ with scoring pattern of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, respectively and scoring pattern is reversed for negative statements. After collection of data, the responses were grouped as low, medium and high based on the mean and standard deviation values. The results of the study clearly indicating that, majority (46.25%) of the farmers had medium level of effectiveness, followed by the rest with low (28.75%) and high (25.00%) level of effectiveness.

The theoretical and practical of implications of the study are the majority of the farmers the farm broadcast programmes have medium level of effectiveness due to socio-personnel and psychological factors like middle to old age, low education, low annual income, medium to low levels of scientific orientation, risk orientation, marketing orientation, innovativeness. On the other hand, routine way of producing farm broadcast programmes, untrained personnel as resource personnel, non-inclusion of farmers experience, case studies & success stories, less emphasis given to high value technologies like protective cultivation, terrace gardening, organic farming, dairy, value addition etc. The contributions and recommendations of the study is by taking the domestic and international market value of other enterprises like; fisheries, poultry and sericulture, the coverage needs to improve in ‘Pasidi Pantalu’ and ‘Annadata’ channels. As a public sector channel, the coverage on general information needs to be reduced and replaced with crop and other enterprises related information.